


Mindscape

by intangible_girl



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Adventure, apparently bulma and videl as a friendship tag doesn't exist???, the b-team gets to do things for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 70,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24364738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intangible_girl/pseuds/intangible_girl
Summary: When the six strongest Z Fighters go missing, it’s up to the weakest among them to find them and bring them back. People like Videl, Bulma, and Chiaotzu may not feel up to the task. But how much does strength matter when your battlefield is the mind itself?
Relationships: Bulma Briefs & Videl Satan, Chiaotzu & Tenshinhan (Dragon Ball), Trunks Briefs & Son Goten, Videl Satan/Son Gohan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My two inspirations for this were MasakoX’s Build-A-Baddie series, and the story also titled [Mindscape](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9522119) by SatuD2 here on Ao3. I took both those premises and ran. I ran so far away.
> 
> Just a note: this takes place pretty soon after the Tournament of Power because that’s when I started writing it. It probably contradicts things in the Broly movie and the manga by now, so’s you know.

_Reluctantly, Bulma handed over the Time Machine and, eagerly, Gohan took it. He gazed greedily down at the capsule in his hand for a moment, then pocketed it before Bulma could change her mind._

_"Don't worry," he said, "if anyone asks, I'll say I stole it."_

_"That's not what I'm worried about." Bulma stepped forward and put her hands on his cheeks, studying his eyes with her large blue ones. Sometimes he forgot Bulma was old enough to be his mother. "I'm worried about_ _ **why**_ _you're doing this."_

_For a moment he thought back to Videl, her face solemn and determined. Viciously he pushed the memory away and gently pulled Bulma's hands down from his face._

_"I have to do this," he told her firmly. "If I don't, I'll regret it for the rest of my life."_

_"You do have more than your fair share of regrets." Bulma gave a sad smile. "But I think trying to fix them will only bring more."_

_She was probably right, Gohan thought as he flew towards Yunzabit Heights. But he didn't care._

* * *

When Videl heard the doorbell ring, she thought for an absurd moment that it was Gohan.

She sighed, putting down the laundry basket she was carrying, and chided herself. First of all, the man wouldn't bother ringing his own doorbell. Besides, he'd left hours earlier to 'visit Piccolo'—though she knew that had only been code for 'I'm angry at you and I need to blow off some steam.' He probably wouldn't be back until after nightfall, although they fought so seldom she wasn't actually sure. Maybe it _was_ him and he was too beat up to open the door.

It wasn't him.

Goten stood on the porch, tear tracks cutting through the grime on his face, the knees of his pants soaked and muddy. Behind him were Tien and Chiaotzu, looking grim, and lying unconscious in Tien's arms was—

"Bulma!" Videl backed up quickly to let them inside, mind racing. She knew Tien mostly by reputation, and even though Bulma knew him better, she also saw him about as infrequently. Why was he carrying her? Why had he carried her _here_? "Goten, what happened?"

She ushered them into the nearest sitting room. Tien laid Bulma on the mostly decorative couch, and Videl threw a blanket over her. She looked at Goten, who was starting to shiver.

"I-I don't know!" he said, voice high with panic. His arms were wrapped around himself and he was staring at Bulma. "I found her like that at Capsule Corp. She was lying in the bushes. The whole building was on lockdown, I— I've never seen it like that before. All the metal shielding was down and the energy shield was too. I couldn't get inside. I didn't see anyone in the whole compound, even the employee parking lot was empty. It was like a ghost town, and she wouldn't wake up…"

Goten sucked in a shuddering breath and visibly tried to calm himself. Videl knelt beside Bulma and gently probed her head, looking for bruises or contusions and finding none. She looked up at Tien, who had parked himself at the edge of the room so they were all in his line of sight. He spoke before she could ask.

"We were at Capsule Corp. because Bulma left a message asking us to come. She didn't give any details, but it sounded urgent."

Videl frowned. "But why would she call _you?_ "

"I don't know." Tien shook his head.

"Okay," Videl said, gearing herself up to be patient, "so why did you bring her _here_?"

All three of them looked at her, nonplussed.

"You said you found her lying unconscious at Capsule Corp. with no idea what happened?" Videl was very carefully not yelling. "Why didn't you call an ambulance?"

Interestingly, both Tien and Goten looked at Chiaotzu.

"She's not injured," he explained. Videl arched an eyebrow.

"And how do you know that?"

Chiaotzu's mouth puckered in concentration. "She's… sleeping. Or, not sleeping, but…" His hands waved in vague patterns around his head as he searched for words. Then he gave up and dropped his arms to his sides. "I just know."

Videl was this close to reading him the riot act, vis a vis head injuries, when she caught sight of Goten huddled at the foot of the couch looking frightened and miserable. She forced herself to smile instead.

"Well, what's done is done. Goten, is Trunks still at school?" Goten nodded. "Can you go get him? He should be here."

Goten unwrapped his arms from around himself.

"I'll be right back," he said, and ran from the room. A second later they heard the woosh of his takeoff outside, and Videl glared at Chiaotzu.

"You'd better be dead certain she's not hurt. Moving someone with a head injury is extremely dangerous!"

"I know! It's not that. She's all..." Chiaotzu spun his hands around each other. "Twisted up inside. Hiding, not injured. Something bad happened, but it wasn't head trauma. I can tell."

Videl stared at him incredulously, then looked at Tien.

"Chiaotzu can read minds even better than I can," he told her. "What he says is the truth."

"O-kay," she said slowly. She did know mind reading was something that came with high level ki use, though she preferred not to think about the implications of that too hard. "So why isn't she waking up?"

Chiaotzu frowned. He walked over to Bulma and put a hand on her head. "I don't know. Her memories of the whole day are a blank. It's like she's been asleep since last night, but she definitely called us this morning. Goten said she called Goku too."

"Did she call Gohan?" Tien asked her, and Videl started to shake her head. She caught herself and shrugged, annoyed that she'd forgotten they were fighting.

"I wouldn't know. He's been gone for hours."

Tien arched an eyebrow. "Gone?"

"Training with Piccolo," she amended calmly. She caught sight of Chiaotzu closing his eyes in concentration and turned to him. "Can you wake her up?"

Chiaotzu opened his eyes and looked at Tien. They seemed to be having a silent conversation, and as the silence wore on, Videl realized they were probably _literally_ conversing in their heads. Whatever the nature of their discussion, Chiaotzu seemed to come off worse, tearing his eyes away from Tien with an annoyed sigh.

"Fine," he said, sounding defeated. He closed his eyes again.

"What?" Videl glanced between them, bewildered. "What?"

"He's going to try to wake her up," Tien explained.

"Was he… _not_ going to do that?" Videl demanded. Chiaotzu opened his eyes briefly.

"It's… complicated," he said. "I might not be able to."

"You will," Tien said confidently. Chiaotzu gave him one last glare and closed his eyes again.

And then… nothing. For several minutes Chiaotzu stood stock still, hand on Bulma's forehead, face serene with concentration. Tien stood almost as still, watching his friend with his arms folded across his chest. Eventually Videl sat down on the armchair next to the couch.

"How long is this going to take?" she asked. Tien glanced briefly at her.

"It's impossible to say," he said.

Videl held back a sigh. More minutes passed. She tried not to fidget.

"Why is Goten not back yet?" Tien asked.

"Trunks' school is pretty far from here," Videl said, grateful for a break in the silence. "He's been going to a new prep school since March. About time, I say. It'd be one thing if he was going to apprentice to Bulma and be an inventor, but he's clearly not interested. He needs to mix with society more if he's going to run the company someday."

"Is he?" Tien seemed interested in spite of himself. Videl shrugged.

"That's my guess. When I ask Goten about it he doesn't know, but I don't know if that's because Trunks doesn't know himself, or if he's not telling Goten."

Tien raised his eyebrows. "I thought there wasn't anything they didn't tell each other."

"They used to." Videl looked down at her hands, linking her fingers together. "They've got so much in common that sometimes I think they forget they come from different worlds. That used to not matter, but lately…"

"What do you mean, different worlds?"

Videl held back another sigh. She'd known none of Gohan's side would understand, but laying it out felt cruel.

"Trunks is a rich city kid who's going to inherit a multi-billion dollar company. Goten is the second son of a country farmer. Under normal circumstances they never would have even met. That was bound to catch up to them sooner or later."

Tien frowned at her. "I think you're being too pessimistic," he said. "What their parents do for a living doesn't matter. Their bond is too strong to let something like that come between them." He glanced at Chiaotzu as he said this, a subtle softness entering his eyes.

Videl chose to refrain from commenting. Tien could be right. He _should_ be right. If anyone could beat the odds stacked against them, it was Goten and Trunks. But Videl knew firsthand the way wealth and fame could poison relationships. Even the friends that hadn't turned bitter or fawning had found themselves repulsed by what her father's rise to fame was doing to Videl herself. She had eventually found friends who didn't mind, or even understood, her newfound prickliness, her defensive arrogance, but not one of her old friendships had survived the transition.

"They'll be alright," Tien reiterated, and Videl gave him an insincere smile.

* * *

_Chiaotzu stood in front of the faintly glowing energy shield of a locked down Capsule Corp., hesitating._ _The way Bulma was steadfastly refusing to interact with reality unnerved him. Some people were like that: any bump on the road of life and they retreated into themselves like a snail into a shell. But Bulma, he knew, was the complete opposite. Bulma came at life with fists swinging. If she was retreating into herself now something truly awful must have happened._

 _But he hadn't come here to speculate. He'd come here to bring her back out. Chiaotzu_ _lifted his hand and pushed it slowly through the shield, which parted for him like water._

_Instantly he was inside, without having gone through the mundane business of opening doors or passing through doorways. All across the atrium was a bustle of activity: robots and ghostly humans carrying printouts and machine parts and cups of coffee. Several copies of Bulma stood around a chalkboard and debated something in loud and esoteric language. None of them paid any attention to Chiaotzu._

_He wandered around for some minutes being totally ignored by everyone, gawking at the sheer amount of movement. Everywhere he looked something was being built, or designed, or imagined. It was controlled chaos, and it left Chiaotzu dizzy._

_Finally he found a passageway that led off the main entrance deeper into the building. At first it went straight back, but soon it turned, then turned again, then forked. Chiaotzu didn't think too hard about it, just picked a random direction, and soon that passage forked and again he chose randomly. As he walked, the featureless walls began to grow narrower, the ceiling lower, until the hallway was too small for even him to squeeze through._

_He backtracked to the last fork and went the other direction, but before long that passage also shrank into nothing. Again he went back, and again, always with the same result._

_Frustrated, he went back to the entrance and thought about what to do._

_"It's just the Fibonacci sequence," a pregnant version of Bulma told him. "It's not that hard if you know what you're doing."_

_Bulla had been born almost a year before, so Chiaotzu knew this was not the real Bulma. The real Bulma was probably at the center of the maze, but he didn't even know what the Fibonacci sequence was, much less how to use it to navigate._

_"Wait, I remember now," Bulma said, laughing. "You're the one who couldn't even do basic addition. You'll never get in there like that."_

_Chiaotzu scowled._

_"I don't need math to fight."_

_"Oh, come on, it's easy. You just start at one and add the previous two numbers together. Even you can do the first few steps. Try it."_

_With nothing else to do, Chiaotzu did, Bulma helping him along._

_"Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, then…?"_

_Chiaotzu sweated. They'd moved beyond his fingers now. Eight plus thirteen was impossible without taking off his shoes and socks, and he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of someone so smart._

_"Oh, alright, since you tried." Bulma handed him a slip of paper with a picture of a strawberry on it. "There. But for heaven's sake, take some remedial classes, will you?"_

_Chiaotzu made quick time with the map, barely managing to squeeze his way through to the center. Once he was through, the entire building opened up like a flower and he was standing on top of a giant strawberry. Bulma_ — _the real Bulma, Chiaotzu was sure_ — _was curled protectively around the stem._

_Without looking at what she was protecting (she deserved what little privacy he could give her), Chiaotzu shook Bulma gently by the shoulder, calling her name. She swatted at him._

" _Bulma," he said again. "You need to wake up."_

" _Go 'way," she mumbled, turning over to face him. Squinting, she caught sight of him and startled. "What the_ — _Chiaotzu? What are you doing here?"_

_She got to her feet and looked around, her mouth dropping open as she took in the sight. Chiaotzu took her hand._

" _You're dreaming," he told her. "And you need to wake up."_

_Bulma stared at him for a moment, and then something dawned in her eyes and the landscape began to melt away. Chiaotzu smiled, relieved._

* * *

On the couch in Videl's house, Chiaotzu's eyes opened the same moment Bulma's did.


	2. Chapter 2

_It had happened so fast. Despite the royal blood in their veins, his children were not immortal, and Bulma was so achingly fragile and so infuriatingly unaware of it. By the time Vegeta knew what had happened it was all over, and he was left alone in the center of a circle of gore, the silence even louder than the screams._

_He was no stranger to slaughter and murder, but this had left him sick to his stomach in a way Saiyans rarely were. For only the second time in his life he leaned over and vomited, the betrayal of his body seeming to go on for a long time. Afterward he felt weak as a baby, and he rested on all fours for several minutes until the shaking stopped._

_The taste of bile in his mouth was unendurable, and he carefully brought one hand up to his mouth, still so weak he was afraid the change in balance might send him toppling to the floor. He scraped away the remnants of his sick with his gloved hand, the fabric rough and cottony and infinitely better tasting than stomach acid._

_For the first time since it happened he allowed himself to look at the bodies surrounding him, and then, when his stomach began to lurch again, he rose swiftly to his feet and exited the room at something only slightly less than a dead run._

* * *

Goten flew with determined speed toward Trunk's prep school. He hadn't been there since the opening ceremony in the spring, and he had barely seen Trunks since then. Not just because he was busy with schoolwork— next year Trunks would be announced as Capsule Corp.'s official heir.

Bulma had always made running the company look easy, so Goten was surprised to find Trunks now had almost no time to spare. Every weekend was taken up with as many social functions as a single person could possibly attend without splitting themselves in two, and he often job-shadowed either Bulma or a member of the board of directors. And when he wasn't doing that, he was busy with schoolwork: math and science and literature like always, but now he was also studying things like ethics, business management, accounting, economics, etiquette. It made Goten's head spin just hearing about it.

Below him the tight cluster of buildings that made up downtown thinned out and relaxed into individual buildings with larger footprints, surrounded by languid squares of grassy areas dotted with trees. Another minute's flight and he had arrived at an intimidatingly large campus with several tennis courts to the north of the building and a proud old oak tree in a place of honor on the front lawn. Goten had never seen Trunks' school from the air, but it was hard to miss.

Hovering high above the school, Goten reached out for his friend's energy, always brighter than the surrounding glow even when Trunks was at ease. Luckily he was outside the building, which made things less complicated. At the last moment Goten remembered himself and touched down on the other side of the hedge surrounding the property, entering the campus on foot rather than from the air. He ran to the shadow of the large oak tree where Trunks was sprawled out on the grass in the center of a large group of people all wearing the same uniform. They were laughing as Goten approached, but when Trunks caught sight of him, his smile fell away and he stood abruptly.

"Can I help you with something?" Trunks said, striding forward to meet Goten, halting his progress before he reached the group. Goten gaped up at his friend— and he was looking _up_ , Trunks having gained nearly a foot of height since Goten had last seen him.

All thoughts of Bulma fled from his mind. Surely they hadn't been separated for long enough that growing an entire foot made sense. But as his mind reached back, Goten realized that the fancy parties and the job-shadowing and the schoolwork had piled on top of each other to the tune of nearly six months. Two inches a month was a little absurd for a human, but for a Saiyan it was normal. Trunks had finally hit his adult growth spurt. And Goten had missed it entirely.

"Goten, what are you doing here?" Trunks hissed in his ear. "I'm in the middle of networking. I'll meet up with you later, okay?"

Trunks had angled himself so that he was between the curious group behind him and Goten in front of him, and Goten realized he was trying to _hide_ him. He suddenly remembered that although they had spent the last six months messaging about _Trunks'_ schooling, and _Trunks'_ dinner parties, and _Trunks'_ job-shadowing, they had spent very little time talking about what was going on with _Goten_. Which, he also realized, had been very little.

Hot shame flooded Goten's body, and with it came anger, and he threw at Trunks the closest weapon he had to hand.

"Your mom's hurt," he said flatly, and instantly regretted it. Trunks flinched, hard, and he stared at Goten in horror. A girl from the group of students called Trunks' name, but he ignored her, still staring at Goten. Feeling shame again, but this time at himself, Goten reached out a hand for Trunks to take. "She's at Videl's," he said softly, hoping Trunks would forgive him.

But Trunks had a habit of nursing his hurts, or, as Chi-Chi often put it, had thinner skin than Goten, and he smacked Goten's hand away and strode forward, making his way toward the entrance. Goten was forced to dance clumsily out of his way or be knocked to the ground. But his anger had already passed as quickly as it had come.

He was about to apologize, explain to Trunks that Bulma might not even be hurt, but the second Trunks turned the corner around the hedge he blasted off into the air so fast he caused a sonic boom. Goten winced as he heard thousands of glass windows shatter at once. At a slower pace, but only just, he followed.

* * *

Videl noticed Bulma's eyes fluttering open and knelt down next to her on the couch, ready to help her if she was unsteady. But Bulma bolted upright, glancing around wildly.

"Videl?" She caught sight of Tien. "Tien? What the hell? Where are we?"

"You're at my house, Bulma," Videl said calmly. "They found you unconscious in front of Capsule Corp. What's the last thing you remember?"

Bulma looked at Videl incredulously, and saw Chiaotzu next to her. "What is this, a party? If I was at Capsule Corp, why am I here?"

Videl tried not to feel vindicated at that.

"Bulma, please. What day is it?"

Bulma swung her feet off the couch and stood up before Videl could stop her. "It's Wednesday. And I feel fine."

Videl moved to keep her from striding out the door. "Bulma, I really—"

A loud boom sounded overhead and all the windows in the house shattered at once. The front door flew off its hinges and into the hallway, and through the splintered doorway came Trunks. He was Super Saiyan, his aura whipping up newspapers and napkins and scattering them everywhere. His tread cracked the floor as he walked toward Bulma, but his aura fell away abruptly as he saw her looking perfectly well.

"Mom!" he said, clutching at her in relief.

Bulma looked at him, aghast. "Trunks, what on Earth—"

Behind him, through the ruined doorway, Goten tiptoed into the house. Trunks whirled around, furious.

"You said she was hurt!" he yelled. Goten flinched and looked at the floor.

"I thought she was!" he retorted.

Bulma shook her son. "Trunks, what have I told you about going Super Saiyan in the house? I didn't just mean _my_ house, you know! I'm taking the remodeling fees out of your allowance. Now apologize to Videl."

Trunks turned to Videl and mumbled, "Sorry."

In the sudden calm, everyone could clearly hear Pan crying upstairs. Before Videl could move, Goten ran to the stairs, calling, "I'll get her."

Bulma sighed.

"Alright, from the top. What happened?"

Tien nodded. "After you called, Chiaotzu and I came to Capsule Corp, but—"

"I never called you," Bulma cut in. Tien blinked at her.

"You did, this morning," he said. "You left a message on my answering machine. You said you needed us right away."

"I don't need you for anything." Bulma was getting agitated. "Anyway, why would I call _you_?"

"It sounded pretty urgent," Chiaotzu said. Goten came back into the room with Pan on his hip. She squealed when she saw Videl, and Videl took her. The poor kid had only gone down for her nap half an hour ago. Videl rocked her gently, wondering how best to get Bulma to lie down again.

Bulma sighed, pushing her hair back from her forehead. "Well, anyway, Trunks, I'm fine, so get back to school. I hope you haven't missed too much of it."

Trunks gave her an odd look.

"School's over, mom," he said. "It's almost 4 o'clock."

Bulma's mouth fell open. "I missed a whole _day_?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Videl asked her again. Bulma shook her head slowly as she recalled.

"I was going to bed, and then… I woke up here." She looked down at herself. "At least I got dressed. Was I sleepwalking?"

"I don't think so," Chiaotzu said. "Your mind was curled up on itself like something bad happened."

Bulma looked at Chiaotzu in abject horror.

"I'm going to need you to back the hell up," she said. "My mind was _what_?"

"Bulla?" Pan queried sleepily. She was looking at Bulma and Trunks. "Bulla come over?"

"Not now, Pan," Videl said.

"Oh no, Bulla!" Goten exclaimed, putting a hand over his mouth. Trunks turned to glare at him.

"What now?"

Goten quailed, then rallied.

"Capsule Corp. was on lockdown. What if Bulla's in there?"

"Capsule Corp. can't be on lockdown," Bulma said angrily. "My dad and I are the only ones who have the codes."

"Well, it was," Goten said in a tiny voice. Bulma exhaled.

"Sorry, kiddo," she said, rubbing her forehead.

"The house wasn't on lockdown when I left this morning," Trunks said. "Although…"

Bulma lowered her hand. "What, sweetie?"

Trunks worried his lower lip. "You _were_ kind of acting strange this morning."

Videl noticed Chiaotzu's ears perk up at this. Bulma frowned at her son.

"Strange how?"

Trunks hunched his shoulders in a shrug. "I don't know. You were just… not yourself, somehow. I thought you were just tired. You looked like you didn't sleep at all last night. You said you were working on something."

Bulma bit her lower lip in a gesture almost identical to Trunks'. Eventually she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

"I'm going to call your grandpa," she said.

Videl sat wearily down on the couch, making sure not to jostle Pan too much. She rocked mindlessly back and forth, willing her daughter to go to sleep, willing everything to be a misunderstanding. After a moment's hesitation, she took her phone out of her pocket and sent Gohan a quick text. She couldn't bring herself to add the usual heart emoji, but he at least deserved to know what was going on. Maybe it would even snap him out of his funk and get him to come home.

After sliding the phone back in her pocket she looked up to find Goten looking hangdog at the foot of the couch. She gestured for him to join her, but he gave her a wan smile and shook his head.

"No, that's not possible!" Bulma was saying into her phone. She was pacing, Trunks trying to keep up with her so he could listen in. "I—dad, let me put you on speaker."

She did so, and Dr. Briefs' tinny voice came loud in the crowded room.

"I didn't put us on lockdown, dear. That leaves you."

"But why would I _do_ that?" Bulma gestured wildly. "Do you know what I was working on last night?"

"Mmm, no, I'm afraid I don't. But you seem to have sent all the employees home, which wasn't very nice of you. I was rather hoping to get some work done on the—"

"I sent them home? What, all of them?"

"I think so. You shut down the surveillance system, so I can't really see on the monitors."

Bulma expanded with rage and disbelief. "Wha— Why would I— What the hell did I _do_? Ugh, nevermind, let me put in the overrides from here."

She began typing furiously on her phone, and Pan perked up when she heard Bulla's burbling voice coming over the speaker. After a few minutes Goten shifted and then spoke.

"Um, Bulma?" he said. Bulma looked up with a glare, which softened when her eyes fell on Goten. "Um, can you ask him if my dad is there?"

Bulma stared at him for a moment.

"Why would your dad be at Capsule Corp.?" she asked.

"You… you called him this morning and asked him to come over. But he still hasn't come back yet. I didn't see him when I went over there, so I thought maybe he's inside."

Bulma breathed in deeply through her nose as Tien and Chiaotzu looked at each other.

"Dad," Bulma said in a voice that was deadly calm. "Do you at least have some drones with you?"

"Drones? Oh, yes, we have some."

"Send them out to look for Goku. And anything else that can explain what the hell is going on."

She went back to typing furiously. They listened with growing concern as Dr. Briefs ticked off room after room which proved unoccupied by Goku or anyone else. Videl kept surreptitiously checking her phone, getting more and more anxious, and more and more annoyed, the longer Gohan went without answering. The text had gone through, so it wasn't that he was out of a service area. He and Piccolo must be really going at it.

"Oh, it's found something," Dr. Briefs said after a few minutes. Everyone perked up, anxious for any kind of news. "Huh. Looks like a cell phone. One of our models, but I don't know who it belongs to. Drone Four, press the power button. Oh, what a cute picture of Pan."

An icy chill flashed its way out to Videl's extremities, making her fingers and toes feel numb and her scalp prickle.

"And whoever it is has a text waiting," Dr. Briefs continued. "'Where r u? Something strange is going on at CC and we can't find Goku. Come home plz.' Huh. That's strange. I wonder who's phone it is."

"It's Gohan's," Videl said tonelessly. Her ears were ringing and the sound of her own voice was strange to her. Everyone turned to look at her, but she was still staring down at her phone, where that exact message sat in her outbox, still awaiting a reply.

"What is Gohan's cell phone doing at my house?" Bulma said.

"That's what I would like to know," Videl said evenly, trying to convince the feeling flooding through her body to remain anxiety instead of morphing into anger. "He told me he was going to talk to Piccolo. He never said anything about going to Capsule Corp."

"Well, I searched all the rooms except for the atrium, which you seem to have locked," came Dr. Briefs' voice over the speaker. "Unless someone's hiding in there, Capsule Corp. is completely empty. No Goku, no one in the gravity room, no employees. Just me, Pansy and Bulla. Bulma, what did you do?"

All eyes were on Bulma, but her eyes were on her phone, teeth chattering with what could have been either anger or fear, her fingers no longer typing.

"Apparently," she said with forced calm, "I locked _myself_ out."

* * *

Chiaotzu was playing patty cake with Pan when a car drove up to the front entrance of Capsule Corp. All of them had followed Bulma there to watch her try to break back in, but Pan had gotten bored and whiny after only a few minutes. Videl had looked so beleaguered trying to deal with her daughter on top of worrying about Gohan that Chiaotzu had volunteered to keep her occupied.

The car stopped and Marron, still in her school clothes, leaped out and marched up to Bulma.

"Where's my mom?" she demanded as Krillin got out of the car and capsulized it. Marron had recently had a growth spurt almost as impressive as Trunks', and as she stood in front of Bulma with her hands on her hips Chiaotzu realized she now looked less like Krillin and more like her mother. Bulma turned around from her efforts to wrangle the front door plate into giving her access, and looked down at the girl who was now only a few inches shorter than her.

"Your mom?" she said slowly.

"Yeah!" Marron's eyes were rimmed red, but there was no hint of tears in her voice. "She came over here this morning and she never came to pick me up from school! She won't answer her phone, she's not at home, we can't find her anywhere. So where is she?"

Krillin gently took his daughter by the shoulders and pulled her back. "Hey, now, let's be calm about this," he said, flashing Bulma an apologetic smile. "I guess you guys just lost track of time, eh?"

Chiaotzu let his hands run on autopilot, Pan still chanting the patty cake song, as he watched Bulma purse her lips so hard they nearly disappeared.

"Did I… call her?" she asked dangerously. Krillin blinked.

"Uh… yeah. This morning. She said it was urgent. I hope everything's okay."

Bulma spun back around to face the door, shouting a sentence comprised mostly of curse words. Videl got up from where she sat next to Pan and began explaining the morning's events to Krillin, while Marron forced her father's hands from off her ears. Busy as he was listening in, Chiaotzu made a mistake in the patty cake pattern and Pan scolded him. He was about to turn his full attention back to her when he felt it.

An unfamiliar mind, nearly as potent as his own, was approaching at high speed. And it was coming with the intent to kill. Chiaotzu had only enough time to shout a mental warning to Tien before jumping on top of Pan, shielding her from the incoming ki blasts.

Explosions tore through the lawn, leaving scars in the pristine landscaping. Krillin pulled down Marron and Videl out of the path of the blasts. Trunks planted himself in front of Bulma, taking the blasts on his back. Tien and Goten stood at the front, shielding the group as a whole. When the smoke cleared, Chiaotzu handed a screaming Pan back to Videl and leaped to join the others at the front.

On the street in front of them stood a figure obscured by a white cloak, its hand still outstretched.

"Who are you?" Tien shouted. The figure pushed its hood back, revealing a face that was both cruelly handsome and utterly alien. His skin was copper scales, with a tuft of rust-colored hair growing from the top of his head. Long, cobra-like fangs curled wickedly down to rest on his lower lip as his mouth curled into a smirk. He folded his arms lightly over his stomach and spoke to Tien.

"That," he said, in a cultured voice with a faint hiss on the sibilants, "is not your concern. Now all of you—" He raised his hand, and too late Chiaotzu raised his own, "—go to sleep!"

Marron, Bulma, Pan and Videl all fell to the ground instantly. Chiaotzu felt the force of the stranger's intentions hit his mental defenses like a pickaxe: sharp and focused and jarring. But he resisted.

Beside him Tien grunted. Krillin flinched but stayed standing. Goten and Trunks held on for a few moments, but in the end, they too slumped to the ground. The stranger smiled, his lips sliding back over his fangs, as he brought up another hand to try again.

"Not so fast!" Tien leaped forward, kicking the stranger in the chest before he could bring his mental powers to bear on them. In an attack spread out over nine people, none of them had felt his full force. With fewer minds to focus on, Chiaotzu knew, the next attack would be far more potent. But the stranger was holding his own against Tien in physical combat, and the distraction was apparently not enough to stop him from gearing up for another mental attack. Krillin joined Tien in the fight, and Chiaotzu lifted his hands and prepared to do battle his way.

* * *

_Chiaotzu found himself in front of a large palace. The architecture was Earth-like: not surprising, since this was merely a picture his own mind was showing him. But it was clear the stranger thought highly of himself. Perhaps his pride was even justified. The defenses surrounding the castle were certainly formidable: thick walls and wide moats and murder holes, in addition to all the hidden traps that surely awaited an unwary intruder. It would take great skill to breach these defenses._

_Great skill, or a lot of power._

_Chiaotzu could tell this stranger was probably even more skilled in the mental arts than himself. He clearly knew a lot of techniques for bolstering his own defenses as well as sneaking into the minds of others. That was probably how he had overtaken Trunks and Goten, strong as they were: they had no discipline or training._

_But Chiaotzu had both training and power, and the stranger didn't stand a chance._

_Gathering himself, Chiaotzu expanded until he stood taller than the tallest spire of the palace. The thick walls were only tripping hazards now, the moats mere puddles. He drew back his foot, now the size of a moving truck, and kicked the gates down in a shower of splinters and dust._

_Shrinking back down, Chiaotzu entered the ravaged palace, the stranger's memories now laid bare before him._

* * *

_Tien, rushing toward him—_

— _ambushing the group outside Capsule Corp.—_

— _lying low in the shadows as the fools attempted to gain access to the building—_

— _leaving Bulma lying in the bushes—_

— _watching with satisfaction as Bulma locked down Capsule Corp—_

— _carrying Piccolo's unconscious body into a dark room—_

— _carrying Gohan's unconscious body into a dark room—_

— _carrying Seventeen's unconscious body into a dark room—_

— _carrying Eighteen's unconscious body into a dark room—_

— _carrying Goku's unconscious body into a dark room—_

— _carrying Vegeta's unconscious body into a dark room—_

— _Bulma telling Vegeta while he watched hidden in the next room, "I know honey, but it's for science. If you're all tensed up it messes with the data. Just relax and follow the lights with your eyes, okay?"—_

— _orbiting Earth in an unfamiliar spacecraft, issued just for this mission; looking down at the world with the eyes of the mind and finding many,_ _ **many**_ _strong warriors, more than anticipated, almost more than feasible; and then finding a single, weak mind that linked them all—_

— _walking, elated, through the palace with a spring in his step—_

— _bowing before his Emperor, and then rising from the bow to find_

_a figure_

_shrouded_

_huge_

_and looking straight at Chiaotzu._

* * *

Gasping, Chiaotzu pulled out of the stranger's mind just in time to see him drive his hand into his own brain.


	3. Chapter 3

_ Krillin thought she didn't know, and Eighteen was fine with that. It was amusing to watch him keep secrets. The cute, pleased little smiles that stole over his face when he thought she wasn't looking were breathtakingly adorable, and the way he would look at her sometimes, eyes full of delicious anticipation, gave her butterflies deep in the pit of her stomach. _

_ She roved from one rack of clothing to another, content to keep herself out of the way while Krillin planned his little plans. She had her own plans, and her own secrets to keep, and she knew with absolute certainty that Krillin did not suspect  _ **_her_ ** _. He was not the kind of man who was  _ _ prone to being  _ _ suspicious of his own wife, and that occasionally worked in Eighteen's favor.  _

_ She held up a flower-print bikini and eyed it critically. Surprises were not her favorite thing, but Krillin loved them, so she would go along with his surprise, and then turn around and give him one of her own. She felt a giggle bubble up unbidden as she imagined his pleased shock. She looked up to find a store clerk looking at her oddly, and she realized her suppressed giggles were showing themselves as a silly grin. She scowled, and the clerk turned away hastily.  _

_ Alone again, she allowed the smile to unfurl across her face. Krillin was going to be so happy, and just imagining it was making  _ **_her_ ** _ so happy she couldn't imagine how she would have any happiness left for when she actually told him. _

* * *

Videl checked her phone for the fourteen millionth time, then put it back in her pocket with an angry sigh. She had been checking it compulsively about every five minutes for the last four hours despite the sound being on, despite knowing Gohan's phone was in her other pocket, despite her bone-deep but irrational conviction that what she needed was not to be sitting here checking her phone, but out there searching for him.

After waking up to Chiaotzu’s worried face, she and the others had huddled outside Capsule Corp. as Bulma attempted to break back in and Chiaotzu attempted to explain what he had seen in the stranger’s mind before he’d killed himself.

“He’s an alien,” Chiaotzu had begun hesitantly, and Trunks had tossed his hair impatiently.

“That’s obvious,” he’d said. “Who  _ was  _ he? What did he  _ want _ ?”

Chiaotzu had bitten his lip.

“Well, first of all,” he’d said slowly, “he doesn’t just have Gohan and Eighteen and Goku in there. He’s also got Piccolo and Seventeen and Vegeta.”

“What do you mean he’s ‘got’ them?” Videl had demanded. “Got them how?”

“It was hard to make out,” Chiaotzu said, frowning deeply at the ground. “He and Bulma put them to sleep somehow… or she put them to sleep and he helped… But he’s working for someone, an emperor out in space.”

“Frieza?” Krillin had turned white. Chiaotzu shook his head adamantly.

“No, definitely not him. Someone else.”

“But why put them all to sleep and then lock them up in here?” Trunks asked.

Chiaotzu had only shaken his head.

Bulma had triumphantly announced her reentry into Capsule Corp. a minute later. It had only taken her another ninety seconds to unlock the atrium, but it took fifteen minutes of concentrated searching before all of them were forced to admit that Capsule Corp. was empty. Not even the room Chiaotzu had seen in the alien’s memories held any clue. They were back to square one.

Videl stretched out her back where she sat. For the past four hours Bulma had been trying to piece together security camera footage that had been painstakingly deleted, probably by her. The others had all opted to stick around and wait, but as the hours went by the tension had fallen into boredom or restlessness. 

Krillin was pacing. Tien and Chiaotzu were meditating and had been for several hours. Trunks was pretending badly to do homework, and Goten was playing one of Trunks’ video games. Marron and Pan had both fallen asleep on Videl’s lap over an hour ago and her legs were starting to fall asleep, but Pan had been so cranky and Marron so dejected that she didn’t dare risk waking them. At first they had all occupied themselves talking, but their fruitless discussions had long ago petered out into silence.

In that silence, which provided no distraction from her thoughts, Videl had been forced to acknowledge that, despite being a parent herself, despite the fact that she knew there was nothing anyone could do that was not already being done, despite not having depended on him for years, there was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to call her father. 

Dr. Briefs shuffled into the room and made a slow beeline for his wife, who was currently trying and failing to get the group to eat something. He took a handful of cookies from her tray and crammed an entire sandwich into his mouth, then went to go stand behind his daughter, chewing loudly.

"Any progress?" he said after swallowing his sandwich with a gulp that was audible across the room. Bulma sighed and stretched, leaning back from the computer to look over at her father.

"I would have better luck trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded," she said. "If I don't make a breakthrough soon I'm going to just invent a DNA tracker from scratch, it'll be faster."

"Oh," Dr. Briefs said, scratching his cheek. He stared blankly at Bulma's computer, and then shrugged and turned away, making for the door back to the rest of the compound. Upon passing his wife again he swiped a few more goodies, but then he paused and looked at her. "Dear, have you been to check on Fido and the others yet today?" 

Mrs. Briefs tisked in annoyance and placed a hand on her cheek.

"No, in all the excitement I completely forgot about them. Poor dears, they must be so hungry. I haven't even been able to water any of my plants yet." Then she giggled, a secretive titter. "Your little camera won't have anything to show you today."

Upon hearing this Bulma slammed her hands down on the computer table and stood abruptly.

"What little camera?" she hissed between her teeth, glaring murderously at both her parents.

"Oh, uh," Dr. Briefs said, scratching the back of his neck and blushing. Videl did not know the man well, but she was reasonably certain she had never once seen him blush. "That's nothing you need to worry yourself with, dear. It's just a little something your mother and I do for fun, got it set on a timer, so there's no need to —"

"Ugh, you guys are disgusting!" Bulma railed, dragging her hands down her face. When her fingers reached the bottom of her jaw she let go, and breathed in deep through her nose. "You know what, never mind. Are you talking about a camera that isn't connected to the network?"

Dr. Briefs nodded.

"Just a little self-contained unit."

"Where is it?" Bulma asked eagerly. Dr. Briefs hooked a finger under his chin.

"You know, I put it in place so long ago I can't quite remember. Dear, where did I put that thing again?"

Mrs. Briefs giggled again.

"Oh, I know exactly where it is," she said to Bulma. "Come with me, dear."

Bulma left the room with her mother, muttering invectives and promising a long talk with both of them later. Trunks, depositing his tablet carelessly on the desk, followed close on his mother's heels. Videl stroked Pan's hair absently, willing herself not to get her hopes up as she waited. A few minutes later Bulma returned with a small go-anywhere camera of Capsule Corp. design. She was holding it away from her body between thumb and forefinger, and Trunks was looking a bit green around the gills.

"Honestly, dear, you can be such a prude," Mrs. Briefs was saying. "If you like, I can give you some advice for spicing things up with Vege—"

"Not. Another. Word,” Bulma ordered, jabbing a finger in her mother's face. As Mrs. Briefs shook her head sadly, Bulma sat down at the computer again, plugging the small camera in and opening the application. "Before I play this,” she said with a dirty look at her father, "I'm not going to see anything traumatizing, am I?"

Dr. Briefs waved a hand in the air dismissively.

"Oh, don't you worry about that. It automatically dumps everything after twenty-four hours, and we haven't had a chance yet today to —"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Bulma turned back to the computer. Videl finally took a chance and extricated herself as carefully she could from underneath the two sleeping girls. Pan murmured and rolled over in her sleep, but did not wake. She huddled with the others around the computer behind Bulma. Everyone held their breath as Bulma clicked play.

The image was confusing at first, starting with a flash of jumbled pixels and then resolving to show a wall of darker and lighter greens. Videl blinked rapidly, and then realized she was looking at a bush from an angle close to the ground. Everything was so still it was hard to tell the recording was even playing, but after about forty-five seconds the image finally changed, showing a tiny lizard scuttling through the grass out from under the bush. Bulma growled in frustration and sped the playback up to twenty times normal speed. It took mere seconds for the recording to reach its first blurred movement. Everyone gasped, but when Bulma finally dragged the recording back to the right moment, all they saw was Pan's red T-shirt and white shorts running through the frame, followed by Videl's black leggings and white boots.

"Wait, that's it?" Krillin demanded, outraged. Bulma did not answer, her face so contorted in intense concentration that she was baring her teeth. She dragged the recording back to the beginning, and played it through at normal speed. For five minutes and thirty-seven seconds they all watched with breathless concentration for any sign of movement, but aside from the little lizard during the first minute, nothing disturbed the peaceful bush until Pan ran by.

"Oh, by all the —" Bulma got up and began waving her arms in the air, letting loose an extremely foul list of invectives. Krillin took her seat, eyes still glued to the screen, running the playback through again, but both Tien and Videl sighed and straightened, giving each other worried looks as they turned away. Videl walked back to the couch, looking down at her daughter's peacefully slumbering form, and considered what to do next.

Her husband, and several other people close to her, were missing. Until Bulma either pieced together the deleted security files, or invented a DNA tracker, or did something else miraculous in the way she often did, there was absolutely nothing Videl could do to help the search. She knew that, and yet, the thought of leaving, of going home and putting Pan to bed, of climbing into her own bed without Gohan in it, of attempting to sleep, was so unthinkable that her mind slid away from the thought like it was ice she was attempting to stand on. She stood, caught in her indecision, and watched as the light changed.

It was getting late, the sun having started setting as they watched the video. It was now casting an ominous red and orange glow into the lab through the two small windows, and as she watched, a thin finger of angry red sunlight snaked its way in to touch Marron on her cheek. The girl stirred, her face squinching up as the light hit her eyes. She sat up, stretched, and yawned, and then looked up at Videl expectantly.

"No news, honey," she said kindly. Marron's face fell. She looked over at her father, who was still obsessively combing through the footage. By this time Bulma's ranting had taken her out into the hallway and possibly already to another part of Capsule Corp., Trunks and his grandparents following. Tien and Chiaotzu were murmuring to each other, likely discussing whether to leave and go home. Marron stood and walked over to stand behind her father. It only took a minute or two watching him watch an unmoving bush before curiosity got the better of her.

"What is that?" she asked. Krillin jerked, looking up at her with red-rimmed eyes and some surprise. When he realized who it was he smiled.

“Bulma found a camera, and I'm hoping it has a clue about where your mother is," he explained, voice hoarse. He turned back to the video without waiting for a response, and Marron stood silently behind him, watching over his shoulder. Videl was just steeling herself to attempt to move Pan without waking her when Marron leaned forward to point at the screen and said,

"What's that?"

Videl  _ knew _ she had to be talking about the lizard, or Pan, or something benign, she had to be, and yet, in spite of herself, she felt a traitorous and energizing surge of hope flood through her, straightening her body and swiveling her eyes to the computer screen against her conscious will.

"What's what?" Krillin said, his voice full of the same hope Videl was currently fighting.

"At the beginning. That weird flash of color. What is that?"

More hope — or, no, it was simply adrenaline, Gohan had given her entire lecture once on the chemical compositions of different emotions, which she had done him the favor of ending prematurely by means of a kiss —  _ something _ flooded through her on the heels of that initial burst, and she found herself gravitating slowly to the computer screen. She had noticed the strange burst of color at the beginning as well, but simply assumed it was digital garbage. There was no reason to think it was significant. She told herself that. She  _ knew _ that. She moved closer anyway.

Krillin was struggling with the controls, constantly over or under shooting the exact timestamp he wanted.

"Bulma!" he shouted, and without waiting for a response, he leapt out of the chair and raced out of the room and down the corridor. Marron plonked herself down in the chair her father had just vacated and applied her more nimble fingers to the controls, and by the time Krillin returned with Bulma and Trunks, Marron was inching the timestamp indicator backwards nanosecond by nanosecond.

"I've almost got it," she said tersely.

"Almost got what?" Bulma demanded crossly. "There's nothing there."

But even as she spoke Marron reached the very first frame of the recording, and the unrelieved green of the bush and the grass beneath it was suddenly overlaid by a flash of color. All eight of them gasped as they found themselves looking at a pair of orange trousers tucked into blue boots.


	4. Chapter 4

The sight of Goku's baggy orange pants and blue boots caused an eruption of sound from the crowd of people in front of the monitor.

"Look!" Trunks cried, pointing at the screen. Mostly obscured by Goku but still clearly visible were a pair of blue tights and white boots. Behind those were a pair of tan slacks draped over brown loafers. On the other side of Goku stood a pair of fashionably cut skinny jeans over black sneakers, and next to those another pair of jeans, baggier and covering muddy work boots. Just barely visible in the background, a pair of brown moccasins and the faintest suggestion of a white cape.

"They were only there for a fraction of a second?" Bulma said incredulously. "How did they just vanish without moving at all?"

"Goku's instant transmission," Tien said authoritatively, gesturing at the screen. "See how they're all standing in a circle?"

"So Goku just took them all somewhere," Trunks said, sagging with relief.

"Where did he take them?" Marron asked.

"I don't know, sweetie," Krillin said, putting a hand on his daughter's shoulder.

"Maybe they went to fight the guy that did this," Goten suggested.

"But why just leave?" Videl pointed out. "Why not at least let us know they're all right?"

"And how did they wake up?" Chiaotzu murmured. Trunks turned to him, disdainful.

"Why's that so surprising? It's been hours."

Chiaotzu shook his head. "It wasn't like a normal sleep. They must have gotten free somehow. But Videl's right. Why would they leave without saying anything?"

"Maybe they couldn't," Tien said darkly. "Bulma was asleep just like them, and she did a lot of things she wouldn't normally do."

Videl, and everyone else, stared at him, but only Bulma voiced what they were all thinking.

"You're talking about mind control," she said. She was shaking, her face pale. "You're saying I didn't just forget what I was doing. You're saying I was forced to do it."

"Rampant speculation aside," Videl said firmly, before Bulma or anyone else could get properly freaked out, "can't any of you sense where they went?"

Tien shook his head.

"I've been reaching out to try to sense any of them this whole time, and either all six of them are suppressing their power levels, or they simply aren't on this planet anymore."

"You think they might be with Whis?" Goten said. Bulma straightened abruptly, the dark circles under her eyes more noticeable as they suddenly began to contrast with a new sparkle in her eyes.

"Whis!" she cried, and dove for her desk drawer. After rummaging around for a few minutes, she triumphantly pulled out a small purple disk the size of a makeup compact. She pressed the large green button in the center and waited, tapping her foot rapidly on the floor. After a few seconds Whis's pleasantly smiling blue face appeared in the center of the communicator. Upon seeing Bulma his smile grew larger.

"Bulma!" he exclaimed gently. "How good to see you. I take it you have some delectables you need us to dispose of?"

"No!" Bulma said impatiently. "Honestly, is food all you ever think about? We have some missing persons here, and we need you to find them!"

Whis's smile melted into solemn confusion.

"Missing persons?" he said, tilting his head ever so slightly. "That seems a bit below my pay grade. Is there some reason you can't find them yourself?"

"That doesn't matter!" Bulma insisted. "The missing persons include your two favorite pupils."

"And my wife!" Krillin added urgently.

"And Piccolo and Gohan," Videl broke in.

"And my brother-in-law," Krillin added belatedly.

Whis put a hand to his cheek.

"Oh my," he said. "When you said missing persons, you certainly weren't kidding about the plural. Alright, I'll take a look," he said, and his image in the communicator went fisheyed as he brought his staff closer to his face to study it. After a few moments he pulled it back. "I see. That does seem like a thorny problem you have for yourselves. I can tell you're going to be very busy, so I'll go ahead and let you go."

Bulma spluttered, and shouted, "Wait!" before Whis could hang up.

"Yes?" he said inquiringly.

"You have to fix this!" Bulma informed him. "Get over here right now and find them!"

"Did I just hear a mortal make a demand of a god?" Beerus' face appeared on the monitor, nudging Whis out of the way. "We are not your errand boys, _Bulma_ , and you would do well to remember that."

"But aren't they your students?" Bulma protested weakly. "Don't you care about what happens to them?"

"Of course we do," Whis assured her. "We're very fond of both Goku and Vegeta. But this is a mortal matter, and the gods do not interfere in mortal matters."

"Oh, hell no!" Bulma shouted. "You've interfered in plenty of our 'mortal matters.' Why is this one any different? I fed you all that delicious food! What was the point of all of that if you aren't even going to help us when we need you?"

"Bulma, I know you're under a lot of stress right now, but it rather sounds like you're implying that you only get dinner with me to butter me up for favors," Whis said patiently.

"No, no, of course not! You know I love spending time with you, Whis," Bulma said winningly, backtracking as fast as she could.

"And I you," Whis said graciously, not calling her out. "And to answer your question, this matter _is_ different. There are no gods involved, no one from another universe. That, at least, should give you some comfort."

"Okay, I guess, but…"

"Then I'll have to make my goodbyes," Whis said firmly. "Remember, Bulma, you are capable of extraordinary things. And if things get hard, and you find yourself in over your head, just remember that I believe in you."

His words were so encouraging and so sincere that it was a moment before Bulma fully understood their meaning. She stuttered and spluttered, but before she could gain traction, Whis said, "Tata!" and ended the call.

A low growl began in the center of Bulma's chest, growing to a scream of frustration that culminated in her throwing the communicator across the room, where it bounced off the wall and clattered to the floor. At the noise Pan startled and began crying loudly, and the sound galvanized Videl into action.

"I think that's my cue to take Pan home," she said, and was surprised when the levity she had tried injecting in her words merely came out tired. It was full dark now, way past Pan's bedtime, and Videl knew it was time for her to start acting like a parent.

She gathered up her sobbing toddler and reached in her pocket to locate her jet copter. The second her fingers touched the capsule, her mind automatically brought up an image of where she usually placed it when she got home: the general use capsule case in the drawer by the front door. But thinking of her own front door made her remember that Gohan would not be there when she arrived, and as she bounced and jostled her daughter to soothe her back to sleep, she looked back up at the assembled group and amended her statement.

"Actually, I'm going to my dad– dad's place," she said, and then hurried out the door without waiting for a response, unwilling to admit even to herself how close she had just come to saying 'daddy'.

* * *

It took all the remaining shreds of her energy, buoyed up and strengthened by her pride, not to fall on her father's neck weeping when he opened the door. He blinked at her in the doorway, utterly bewildered, and she braced herself for the inevitable storm of questions and vicarious outrage that was sure to come.

But her father surprised her. He immediately took Pan's fitfully sleeping form, gently held her against his own shoulder, and ushered them in without a word. He moved to the wall-mounted intercom button to summon one of the staff, but before pressing it he turned back to look at his daughter.

"I'm not going to ask what happened," he said softly, "but remember, this will always be your home. You can stay as long as you need, Videl."

It was not until the maid bowed her into a fully furnished guest room and closed the door behind her that Videl's tired brain finally interpreted her father's sad, sideways, understanding look: he thought she was running away from Gohan.

The realization was like a punch in the gut, literally making it harder for her to breathe. She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed, holding herself together, the hunger gnawing at her belly adding to the illusion of having received a physical blow. The fact that she had actually been fighting with him gave her father's mistaken conclusion far more weight than it might have had normally. Even worse, she knew exactly why _that_ was his assumption upon finding his daughter and granddaughter on his doorstep late at night looking careworn, and it was not because he felt Gohan was unsuitable as a husband. The poor man was so used to significant others walking out on him, kicking him out, rejecting him from their lives, that by the time she was twelve Videl had put her foot down and insisted that all girlfriends be vetted by her. After that there had been no more girlfriends at all.

The tears she had been fighting threatened to surge over her self-control, and she gulped them down and opened the door, headed for the gym.

"Videl!" a high-pitched voice sang, and she looked up to find Buu charging her from the end of the corridor. Before she could protest he had wrapped her up in a tight hug. "Buu glad to see you! You no come over enough now that you married. Where Panny?"

Videl smiled in spite of herself. She hadn't bonded as closely with Buu as her father had, but his single-minded affection was hard not to appreciate. She was Mr. Satan's daughter, and therefore just as precious. Besides, he was warm and squishy, and the hug, if a little too tight, felt nice.

"Pan is sleeping," she said, and Buu finally released her. He looked at her in worry and confusion.

"Why Panny sleeping here?" he asked. She sighed deeply, reminding herself that she was not going to be able to delay explanations forever.

"Gohan and some of our other friends are missing," she said, trying to ignore the way saying the words out loud felt like she was making them come true. Buu's eyes, normally nearly shut by the force of his doughy cheeks, opened wide.

"Gohan missing?" he said, and then tilted his head back and began roving it around as though scenting for something. "Buu find him for you."

Touched, but certain if someone like Tien could not find them that way, Buu would be unable to, Videl opened her mouth to tell him not to bother. Before she could speak, however, Buu looked back down at her, something steely in his normally happily apathetic eyes.

"He not here," Buu said, putting a comforting hand on Videl's shoulder. "But not worry. Buu no give up. Buu keep searching until he find him."

And with no more warning than that, he rocketed into the sky, heedless of the fact that there was a roof in the way. Timber and plaster rained down, an earsplitting crack accompanying the jet engine sound of Buu breaking the sound barrier. Dimly Videl was aware of shouting, and of the fact that she was lucky nothing larger than a chunk of drywall had landed on her. She came to herself with her father's hands on her shoulders, his worried eyes boring into hers.

"Videl, are you all right?"

It was his sympathy that undid her. She had been holding herself together all day for the sake of her daughter, of Goten, of the others, and now she could no longer find it in her to be strong.

Tears began pouring down her cheeks before she could stop them. Hercule took one look at them and pulled her in for a hug, and for the first time since she was six years old, Videl leaned on her father and cried.

* * *

Videl awoke the next morning when the sunlight glanced in the window and touched her face. She sat up in the plush, fourposter bed she had slept in, rubbed her eyes, and took stock.

Hercule had taken the news that his son-in-law and several others were missing remarkably well, considering she had delivered it while sobbing on his chest. He had looked troubled, and thoughtful, but he hadn't pestered her with questions as she had expected. He'd simply given her some dinner and sent her to bed, telling her she'd feel better in the morning. Videl hadn't quite believed him. But now, sitting in the morning sunshine, her head was clear and her heart was calm. Surely Bulma had pulled off some miracle in the nighttime, and even if not, they had hardly exhausted all their options last night. There were places to look, people to ask. There were things to do. Things _she_ could do.

Before she could do more than fling the covers away, her phone on the bedside table began to ring. She picked it up, still sitting in bed, and found that it was from Bulma. She accepted the call rapidly.

"Hello?"

"Videl? Pack yourself a bag and get over here as fast as you can. We're going to space."

"Space?" Videl repeated dumbly, but then she shook herself and jumped out of bed, flinging open the closets and being grateful for once that her father had insisted on keeping a full wardrobe in his guest room. "What do you mean — where? Where in space? What are you talking about?"

"No time." Bulma sounded distracted, and she said something unintelligible to someone on her end of the line. Videl located a duffel bag and began stuffing it with clothes. "Pack for about a week — no, we'll be coming back, two weeks. I'll have enough food, so don't worry about that. Oh, bring Buu, too, we'll need him."

"Sorry," Videl said through gritted teeth, stuffing a few shirts of Gohan's into the duffel bag in her haste. She didn't bother pulling them back out. "He kind of flew away on me last night, I have no idea where he is now."

"Damn," Bulma said, sounding more present than she had for the rest of the conversation. "That's really not good. I'll see if Tien can find him. We might be going up against somebody major."

"Who? Who are we going up against?" Videl demanded, pausing in her packing, but Bulma had already hung up. Videl swore, attempting to stuff the phone into her pocket, and then realized she was still in her pajamas. She pulled them off and threw on an old university T-shirt of Gohan's and the same leggings she had been wearing the day before. Grabbing the duffel bag she ran downstairs.

Her father and Pan were already at the kitchen table eating breakfast, and they looked up in surprise as she burst into the room. Ignoring her father's requests for information, she glanced at the clock.

"Crap, I forgot to ask when they were leaving," she said, and immediately regretted it.

"Crap crap, crappy crap!" Pan sing-songed. Videl decided that didn't have to be her problem today. She pulled down a jar of her father's meal replacement powder, and began spooning it into a glass even when it turned out to be the strong stuff she had always hated.

"Dad, I need you to watch Pan for a while," she said as she yanked the refrigerator door open in search of the milk. "Bulma says we're going to be gone for a couple of weeks. You have a key to the house if she needs anything."

"But where are you going?" Hercule asked in bewilderment, watching his daughter chug peanut butter flavored protein powder with her eyes squeezed shut.

"Space, apparently," Videl said once she had chased down the powder with a glass of water. She passed by her father on her way to grab her boots and tried to ignore the horrified confusion on his face.

"Space? What do you mean, _space_? Why would you need to go to space?"

Videl gave putting on her boots far more attention than the task really needed.

"I guess because that's where Gohan and the others are," she said with confidence she did not feel. Admitting she knew as little about the situation as Hercule did would do nothing to make him feel better, and leaving Pan with her grandfather with almost no notice was bad enough. Leaving her with a grandfather who was worried out of his mind felt downright irresponsible. For her daughter's sake, she needed her father to believe she was strong and in control.

"Where daddy?" Pan said, and Videl wondered how she had managed to dodge _that_ bullet for an entire day. She paused with the second boot only halfway up her foot as she thought frantically what to say. Eventually she pulled it all the way up and stood, giving her daughter a kiss on her sticky cheek.

"Daddy got lost," she said, having chosen to dance the line between truth and lies, "so mommy's going to look for him. You be good and stay with grandpa, okay?"

"Daddy lost?" Pan said, her cereal-covered spoon held absently in one chubby fist. Her little brow furrowed deeper and deeper as she attempted to decipher this new idea, and for a moment Videl was afraid she was going to burst into tears. Then she brightened, grinning up at her mother as though she had discovered the ultimate secret of the universe. "Olly olly oxen free!"

Videl smiled in spite of herself. She tousled Pan's hair and gave her another kiss.

"That's right, sweetie," she said. "I'll be back as soon as I find him."

"Videl." Hercule stood up and gave her a serious look, one that was almost stern. In spite of herself she met his eyes, steeling herself for the inevitable argument. But for a long moment he didn't say anything, just let his eyes rove over her as though trying to memorize the way she looked. Then, as though his memory banks had retained all the information about her they could hold, his face split into the most insincere grin she had ever seen him make. "We'll be alright while you're looking for Gohan, so don't you worry about us, okay? Me and Panny will be just fine."

Videl realized with a shock that she was not the only parent in the room. Her father knew she needed him to be strong, and whether he meant it or not, that was the image he was giving her. She readjusted the duffel bag strap on her shoulder to hide the fact that she suddenly wanted to cry.

"Thanks, dad," she whispered.

Hercule smiled, although it was a wobbly one, and he bent down over Pan.

"Give mommy a big wave, okay sweetie?"

"Bye mommy!" Pan called, waving her cereal spoon so hard bits of food went everywhere. Videl waved back, and then turned and fled before the tears could fall.

* * *

_He was a strange opponent, on strange terrain._

_Goku could neither see nor hear him, but he knew he was there. Tiny changes in air pressure, the prickling of the hair on the back of his neck, the swishing back and forth of a tail that was no longer there, all told him his enemy was here, and he was circling nearer._

_The thick trees held the area enclosed, deadening all sound and trapping the smells of soil, animal droppings, dead foliage and pungent flowers until they clogged his nose with the scent. There would be little room to maneuver once they engaged, no upper atmosphere to line up shots in, no evenly spaced trees to weave around and use as cover. The thicket he was in was as small as his bedroom, vines and branches encroaching on what little space a fallen tree had created in the dense forest. It would be a difficult battle, unlike any he had ever fought before, against an unknown foe._

_He had never been more excited._


	5. Chapter 5

Captain Yaki of Galactic Patrol ship 419 had always had a low opinion of Earth. It was barely more than a footnote in the pages of Galactic history, notable only in recent years as being the home of some very famous warriors. A backwards place full of violence and ignorance, Yaki had initially been appalled to find himself ordered to go there, with a full investigation team no less. But upon reviewing the mission notes he realized how important the task was.

Normally any intelligence reported by Patrolman Jaco was automatically discarded, but this time the man had gone and mentioned Ophidia. Upon being threatened with disciplinary action for crying wolf, Jaco had produced pictures sent to him by his contact on Earth that had Mission Coordinator Pung spitting out his space coffee.

Ophidia had been a thorn in the Galactic Patrol's side for a long time now. Once a tributary to Frieza's Empire, upon his demise it had begun making its own bid for galactic domination, and by now it was an empire in its own right, twelve systems to its name and an army more fearsome in some ways than Frieza's own. Where the Cold Empire valued freaks of nature and abnormally strong mutations, its forces a hodgepodge of strong individuals, the Ophidian Army was terrifying in its cohesion and coordination. A change in one part of the battle was instantly responded to by the entire army, and although none of the individual soldiers were particularly strong, they were utterly disdainful of death. Despite their always heavy casualties, they won nearly every engagement they took part in.

Luckily for the Galactic Patrol, the current Emperor did not seem interested in them, for the moment at least. After his revival, Frieza had become Ophidia's main target, and it had been relatively easy for the Galactic King to broker a peace treaty with them, although everyone involved understood that the peace was only temporary. The Galactic Patrol's jurisdiction was vast, but their forces were relatively weak, and they kept the peace more through prevention and diplomacy than military might. As long as Frieza was taking up Ophidia's attention, their Emperor preferred not to divide his forces. But if that balance ever changed, the rest of the galaxy was next.

Hearing of an Ophidian on Earth, a place home to such ridiculously strong warriors, was confusing, not to mention troubling. Yaki and his investigation team had been dispatched immediately, and, at least at first, he had found his opinions of Earthlings unchanged.

Their main contact, and the victim of the Ophidian's attack, had been an Earth woman named Bulma, an unpleasant sort who tried to stick her nose into everything and clearly expected the Galactic Patrol to do her bidding without question. According to her, the dead Ophidian was connected with the disappearance of her husband and several of her acquaintances, and thanks to Jaco's running commentary, the very beings in question were some of the famously strong warriors Earth was known for. Her constant assumption had been that the Galactic Patrol would take action to retrieve her lost loved ones, and she grew angry at every implication that this was not going to happen. Yaki had tried explaining the situation to her, but she had only accused him of cowardice, an insult that only stung a little as it was hard to really be offended by someone so clearly out of her wits.

Once all the information had been gathered, Yaki had been forced to make a judgment call, and while it was not one he was particularly proud of, sometimes certain measures had to be taken for the greater good. It helped that the Ophidian had apparently been trying to run as far under the radar as possible. Although he was a blood relation to the current Emperor (a very troubling fact indeed), he was only a distant grandnephew, and his vehicle, found crashed in the mountains, had been a normal, off the line interstellar cruiser, not military grade in any sense of the word. Despite the truth being obvious to anyone who kept an eye on galactic politics, it was easy for Yaki to declare the incident of no concern to the Galactic Patrol and his investigation over.

Of course Bulma had objected, strongly and unpleasantly, but it had taken her only a few minutes to calm down enough to invite them to stay for brunch. In fact, her demeanor had been so improved after the investigation that Yaki was beginning to suspect her earlier unpleasantness had been merely the result of stress caused by unanswered questions. And the food her mother was serving was simply scrumptious. Maybe Earthlings weren't so bad. He ate another buttered croissant, smiling jovially as his lieutenant teased Jaco for only being able to enjoy the cheese cubes.

A few minutes ago a couple of Earth vehicles had touched down in Bulma's yard, and she had politely requested that the investigation team move inside so as not to reveal the presence of aliens to those who were not prepared to learn about their existence. It was yet more proof of how backwards and uncivilized Earth was, but the food had Yaki feeling benevolent and he was happy to comply, especially when he was assured that the food would move with them. Now, pleasantly full, having expanded his horizons and saved the galaxy from needless war, Yaki began considering how to break it to his team that it was time to leave.

Suddenly, from outside, came the all-too-familiar sound of his ship's engines starting up. Yaki stood and ran to the balcony just in time to see his ship, sans any of her crew, lift up into the air and, wobbling as though piloted by a total amateur, make its way laboriously into space.

The rest of his crew joined him, giving shouts of alarm and confusion, but Yaki was silent. He felt Jaco come up beside him, a plate of cheese cubes in one hand and a toothpick in the other.

"I told you," he said, shaking his head sadly. "Earthlings are crazy." He popped a cheese cube in his mouth and added, "Especially that one."

* * *

Space was cold.

Videl had gotten a jacket out of her duffel bag and found an old to-do list in the pocket. With nothing else to do, she had spent the whole trip slowly and meticulously shredding it. Staring up at the huge temple in front of her and knowing that she had a bunch of tiny pieces of paper on her person that said things like _go groce, ke Pan to Gr,_ and _uy pears fo_ was somehow worse than the fact that she was standing in front of a temple in workout clothes. Bulma, who smelled like she hadn't showered in days and wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt with electrical burns dotting the front, was surveying the temple as though it wasn't good enough for _her_.

"I... may have left a bit of a mess when I was here last," Bulma said as they were tromping up the ridiculously large staircase. It sounded like the kind of thing she knew she should have mentioned earlier and deliberately hadn't. "So I might need you boys to back me up a little, okay?"

"In what sense?" Tien said, his tone forbidding but somehow also forbearing. He was giving Bulma a flat stare that would've had Videl's hackles raising if he had trained it on her, but Bulma merely gave him a saucy wink.

"Just think of yourselves as the stick that accompanies the carrot."

Videl was alarmed to also receive a wink as Bulma said the word 'carrot', but there was no time to inquire further. They reached the top of the stairs and found themselves face-to-face with a large-headed man, staring impassively at them. When his eyes landed on Bulma his impassive expression shifted fractionally into something more forbidding.

"You do not have an appointment," he said in a mellifluous voice. Bulma strode past him without a glance in his direction. "You cannot see Master Zuno without an appointment," the man insisted, trotting after her. "You are welcome to add your name to the waiting list which has now shortened to six years, but — wait — I must insist —"

The man made an impatient sound and fell back, snapping his fingers. Four individuals a little larger than the attendant but otherwise identical sprang from nowhere and arranged themselves across the entryway that led deeper into the temple, and finally Bulma halted. She looked back at Tien and Krillin and made an after you gesture. Krillin and Tien glanced at each other. Krillin shrugged.

"I'll take two and you take two?" he offered.

"Very well."

With no more effort or hesitation than it would've taken them to move furniture, they each took hold of two of the individuals and tossed them gently out of the way. Bulma walked through the now clear path, head high and smirking like an empress. Videl glanced at Chiaotzu, who shrugged and followed Bulma, leaving her no choice but to follow as well.

"I really must protest," came a clear voice from further down the hallway. "Last time was a favor to the patrolman only. I cannot be in the habit of making exceptions to my schedule."

Soon the corridor opened into a large hall, and at the center of it was a man even larger and more unpleasant looking than the attendants had been. Videl wondered again what might be required of a 'carrot' in a situation like this.

"Last time was just idle curiosity," Bulma said, coming to rest in front of the large man with her hands on her hips. "This is something much more serious. You're making an exception to your schedule whether you want to or not."

"No," the man, who had to be Master Zuno, said simply. Again Bulma gestured for Krillin and Tien to do their work, but this time Tien shook his head.

"Not going to happen, Bulma," he said.

"I've never played bad cop before, and I'm not about to start now," Krillin added.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Bulma turned all the way around, presenting Zuno with her back, and gave Krillin and Tien the same glare she had given him. "Don't you want to get them back?"

Krillin and Tien started to protest, but Videl could already tell this argument was going to go exactly nowhere. "Wait."

Zuno looked at her for the first time, and she could see in his eyes the kind of carrot he wanted her to be. Swallowing down her distaste, she addressed him.

"Bulma tells me you know everything," she began in as respectful a voice as she could muster with bile building in the back of her throat, "so you must already know why we're here."

"Perhaps," Zuno said, eyes somehow growing more half-lidded. She pressed on.

"I'm sure you already know all about Ophidia, and what they have to do with the disappearance of our people. I'm sure you also know whether or not Ophidia has plans to take over this place if they get enough firepower to do so."

Zuno began to sweat. His eyes widened slightly and began darting around the room. The idea was clearly a new one. Videl went in for the kill, keeping her voice respectful and almost sweet.

"As the person who knows everything, only you can make the call as to whether helping us would be in your best interest. But there's one other thing you probably also know, and that is what will happen if we find our people on our own and they learn of your unhelpfulness. My Gohan would never think of holding a grudge, of course, but I'm sure you know as well as I do what, say, Vegeta might do if he got it into his head that we had been... mistreated."

She was aware of her companions staring at her with open mouths, but she kept her expression schooled and her eyes on Zuno's. Even his sweat was fat, great drops rolling down the mountain of his face like marbles. Finally he slumped, pulling out a lacy handkerchief and patting his face dry.

"Very well," he said. "As long as you are the one to give the offering."

"That was amazing, Videl!" Bulma said, taking her by the shoulders and marching her up to Zuno. "Just a peck on the cheek will do."

Videl, who had been expecting quite a bit more and quite a lot worse, gave a kiss that was more sound than substance, stepping away quickly once the deed was done. His wide cheeks flushed red, and he pondered for a moment.

"As you are young and beautiful, but still, in the end, coercing me, you may have five questions."

"I don't know whether to be insulted for myself or you," Bulma muttered. "Okay, honey, don't say a word until I tell you what to say. He's really tricky about what questions count."

Bulma stood stock still, only her lips moving as she tested out and discarded various questions. Videl took the opportunity to discreetly wipe her lips on her sleeve. Eventually Bulma raised her head and whispered in Videl's ear.

"Where are Vegeta, Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Android Eighteen and Android Seventeen?"

Zuno's mellifluous monotone came without a moment's hesitation.

"They are on the main planet in the Ophidian system, in the capital city."

It was nothing they hadn't suspected, but the confirmation still came as a blow. Somehow being out in space herself wasn't nearly as lonely as knowing that Gohan was out here as well.

Bulma didn't give her time to think before whispering the next question in her ear.

"Why did they go there?"

Zuno's expression did not change, as though what he said next mattered as little as what he'd said before.

"Because they are under the influence of mind control."

_Mind control._

Videl's stomach swooped, like she had lost concentration in midair and was plummeting to the ground. They had all been dancing around the idea, none of them willing to make that leap in logic. To have it confirmed in such a matter-of-fact way...

She placed her hand in her jacket pocket and fingered the tiny scraps of paper there, knowing that one of them said, _t Gohan a ne_. With his name, at least, in her grasp, she turned slowly to look at her companions, her ears ringing.

Tien and Chiaotzu were horrified, of course, and Krillin looked like he was about to throw up. But next to her, staring into space, practically vibrating, Bulma looked as though she were ready to strangle something, and she didn't much care what.

"Bulma?" Videl said, her voice a papery whisper. She swallowed. "Bulma, what do I ask next?"

Slowly Bulma found her way back to herself, looking at Videl as though she didn't know who she was. Then she gave herself a minute shake and looked back down at the floor, lips moving at lightning speed. When Videl repeated her words a moment later her voice sounded loud in the stillness of the temple.

"Who is mind controlling them?"

"His name is Zema ad Zaal, 73rd Emperor of the Ophid dynasty."

"Why?" Videl said without thinking. At the same time Tien exclaimed, "what?", but she barely noticed. She looked at Bulma with wide, apologetic eyes, but Bulma shook her head.

"It's basically what I would have asked anyway," she said.

"He intends to use their strength to defeat Frieza, with the ultimate goal of ruling the entire galaxy himself."

Videl pursed her lips, a bubble of panic rising in her chest. Bulma crossed her arms tightly, head bowed until her chin touched her chest, eyes tracking and lips moving. Eventually she raised her head and spoke the only question that mattered now.

"How do we free them from mind control?"

"There are three possibilities," Zuno said with all the emotion of an encyclopedia. "The first is to kill or otherwise incapacitate Zema himself. The second is to override his control with an even more powerful psychic. The third is to construct a device that will block psychic waves."

"A device that —" Bulma began, but an attendant came forward and ushered them out.

"You have had your questions answered, please do not come again," he said. Videl tried to remember if it had really been five questions, but Bulma was already walking back out, muttering to herself and bumping into walls. Videl took her arm, guiding her as her mind raced, and she looked back once to see Zuno watching them with an unreadable expression.

* * *

The walk back to the ship was mostly silent, Bulma's muttering the only sound until they reached the tree line. Suddenly she snapped out of her reverie and glared at Tien.

"You know something," she snapped. He blinked at her in some confusion. "When he said who's controlling them. You sounded like you knew that name."

Tien shook his head slowly in bewilderment, and then firmly in negation as he understood. "No, I have no idea who that is. But he only said one name. If there is only one person controlling all six of them... that doesn't bode well."

"What, it would be better if we had six psychics to deal with?" Bulma demanded.

"It might," Tien shot back. "The amount of skill it would take for one person to control six at a time is astounding. I didn't think it was possible. Are you sure Zuno can be trusted?"

Bulma looked away, folding her arms tightly over her chest.

"Believe me, he's the real deal. If he says it's one guy then it's one guy."

Tien let out a breath that was too controlled to be called a sigh.

"Then he's not a man, he's a monster."

The air here was warm enough to be called pleasant, but Videl shivered and zipped up her jacket a little higher anyway. Bulma looked at Tien with a narrow-eyed, sideways glance.

"You sound like you know a lot about this."

The time it took Tien to answer was more eloquent than his eventual reply.

"Only in theory."

The ship came into view as they went around a bend in the path, and conversation ceased as they realized that the cargo bay door was still lowered. As they got closer they could see a figure sitting in the middle of the floor dressed in flowing white pants and a vest. They caught only a glimpse of unnaturally high cheekbones over chubby cheeks, large caterpillar eyebrows and an overbite, before the figure scooted quickly around so it was facing away from the door.

"Don't look at me," the figure said in an odd double voice. As they watched, it glowed, split apart, and resolved into Trunks and Goten sitting next to each other on the floor in a mirror image of each other. They made awkward, angry eye contact, and then quickly looked away.

"I take it the fusion practice isn't going well," Krillin said unnecessarily. Trunks snarled wordlessly and pounded his way up the ladder to the bridge. Goten lifted his head from looking hangdog at the floor and regarded them with hope.

"Well?"

All of them glanced at each other, but Bulma walked past Goten to follow Trunks, putting a quick hand on his shoulder as she passed, and it was clear that neither Krillin nor Tien wanted to be the bearer of bad news. With a deep sigh, and an almost perverse sense of gratitude (being strong for someone else was easier than being strong for yourself), Videl stepped forward and began to tell Goten the news.


	6. Chapter 6

_It was hard to get television all the way out on the island, but they'd managed it. The way they fell all over themselves to please him was pitiful to watch, so he rarely asked for things. But TV had been worth it._

_Outside, the rain pelted the metal roof of his capsule base, and even in this weather Seventeen kept his supersonic ear out for nefarious activity. But inside he was cozy and warm, and enthralled by the latest episode of Flower Fighters._

_Princess Bunny had finally unlocked her full powers, shown in a five minute long transformation sequence that_ _**had** _ _to be diegetic because they kept cutting to the villain reacting. It amazed him every time, the way some people could be slaves to ritual, and even now, on episode fifty-four, he kept the remote in his hand, finger hovering over the channel up button as though there was even the slightest chance he was going to get bored and tune into a nature special about flying frogs._

_Domino Mask and Princess Bunny clasped hands, combining their love and their powers in a last-ditch effort to remove Iron Dominator from existence. Seventeen could flick the guy into the sun like a booger, he knew he could, but he supposed that would make for poor TV. Still, it was silly that the girl could spend the entire show eating crepes with her friends and going to museums, and still somehow have the combat prowess to defeat ultimate evil._

_His phone rang, and without moving his eyes from the screen he picked it up and answered it._

" _Seventeen here."_

_"You know what to do," said the voice on the other end of the line._

_Seventeen hung up without replying._

_"Yes," he said to himself. "Yes, I do."_

* * *

Goten was just thinking maybe he'd gotten away with it when Videl turned to look at him.

"I'm curious, buddy," she said, in a voice she probably thought was jovial, "how did Chi-Chi react when you told her you were going to space?"

He hesitated, trying to come up with a lie that would sound feasible, but he wasn't fast enough and Videl's face fell.

"You didn't tell her?"

Bulma looked up from where she was hunched over her worktable.

"Of course he told her," she said, her tone promising swift retribution if he did not confirm. "I sent him over there and he came back with a capsule full of supplies. Right?"

Goten squirmed.

"I mean..."

Bulma turned full around in her seat to face him squarely and flipped up the magnification goggles she had been wearing.

"You showed me the capsule and everything," she said in disbelief. Goten nodded swiftly, glad to be able to confirm something.

"I did. It was our seventy-two hour kit."

Videl, who had been reading something on a tablet, set it aside. The look she was giving him was more shocked than disapproving, but shock itself, Goten was finding, could be disapproval enough.

"But you didn't actually tell her where you were going with it?"

He looked down at his boots, and then decided it was too late for them to take him home anyway so he might as well own up. He faced the two women squarely.

"I knew she would never let me go without a big argument," he said defiantly. "And we didn't have that kind of time to waste."

Bulma and Videl glanced at each other. Bulma looked back to him first.

"I'm not saying you're wrong," she said, "but you're gonna have one hell of a homecoming when we get back."

Goten looked down again. He didn't need her to tell him that. There was a long silence, during which Bulma flipped her goggles back down and began soldering again, but when Goten dared to look up, Videl met his eyes and gave him a smile.

"I didn't know Chi-Chi had a seventy-two hour kit," she said. He nodded, grateful for the change in subject.

"A few years ago mom and grandpa did a program where they had everybody in the village make one just in case."

"I keep forgetting you're basically royalty," Videl said with more fake joviality. Goten wasn't in the mood to match it, so he didn't try.

"I'm not, really. Grandpa got his title illegitimately, so it can't be passed down. Besides, there's not a lot of money left, and Grandpa's been talking about finally incorporating Mount Paozu into King Furry's domain."

Trunks looked up from where he'd been sitting down the wall from Goten, working on his own tablet.

"Don't let him do that," he said. "He owns that land outright, doesn't he? If he incorporates then he'll have to pay taxes on it."

Trunks spoke as though he were helpfully explaining something Goten would, of course, have no way of knowing himself. It made Goten, who had listened to his mom and grandfather have this conversation hundreds of times, frown.

"Not if he does it under the Unification Act of 655, since technically he never renounced his claim even when he reformed. If he goes to the capital and swears fealty, then he just hands over the village and most of the land, and keeps whatever part of it he needs to live on like any other private citizen. That means the village could be taken care of by the kingdom instead of Grandpa trying to levy taxes by himself. There are at least a couple families that would be better off that way anyway."

Trunks set his tablet down on his knee and gave Goten a condescending look.

"But he would still have to pay taxes on the land he owns, right? He would do better just letting the government annex the parts he doesn't want to take care of anymore."

Goten returned the look with one of his own.

"If he lets them annex it then they count as conquered territory and the residents would have to pay penalty taxes for a hundred years. Grandpa would never want them to have to do that."

"Then why doesn't he just incorporate, then?" Trunks said impatiently. Goten was almost bewildered. The son of Vegeta was asking him this question?

"Because then he would have to go to the capital and get down on one knee in front of King Furry and all his counselors and make a public statement. He's way too proud for that."

Trunks grunted and picked up his tablet again. The wordless dismissal made something hot and prickly flash through Goten's skin. If he had been back home he would've immediately gone outside, letting the gentle rhythms of wind and streams and forests leech the bad feelings out of him. But he had nowhere to go. The entire ship had a footprint about as big as his house on Mount Paozu, and there were only two levels: the cargo bay and the bridge. The cargo bay was bigger, and open, and almost everyone was in there, but the bridge had a lot of chairs and buttons and levers, and anyway Tien and Chiaotzu were currently using it to meditate. The only other option was the tiny bathroom, and Krillin was in there.

Goten picked up his video game again and tried to play it, but after a few minutes he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He let himself imagine, for the first time he could remember, what life would be like if Trunks was no longer his best friend.

They would still run into each other a lot. The rest of their families were all friends with each other, so they would never truly lose touch. Would they end up just nodding acquaintances at parties, the way Vegeta and Eighteen made eye contact exactly once each time they met and then pretended the other didn't exist? But Vegeta and Eighteen had never been best friends.

The truth was he couldn't imagine life without Trunks by his side, egging him on, getting him into and out of trouble, telling him everything and listening to everything Goten told him. If it was up to him things would always stay the same, but it was looking more and more like the choice would not be his. Did Trunks notice it was happening? Did he care? Was he going through a phase, something they would laugh about together later? Or...?

Tien came down the ladder that led to the bridge, followed by Chiaotzu, and, as casually as he could, Goten picked up his video game and ascended the ladder.

* * *

Videl moved smoothly through the kata, the familiar movements helping distract her. After Goten had made his escape up the ladder she realized she wasn't going to be able to pretend to herself that she was fine just reading a book, like this was a vacation and she was passing the time on a boring flight.

Gohan had once told her that all kata helped direct energy, and she knew what he meant. But for her a kata would always be, first and foremost, a way to keep her technique sharp without having to find a sparring partner on her level. Most humans were too weak, and all the martial artists she knew now were too strong.

Its secondary purpose, today at least, was to tire her out and make her too exhausted to think. Having already gone through the first level and now making her way through the second without even a dip in the buzzing of her brain, she realized that goal was going to be the work of many hours.

So she was not entirely annoyed when she caught Tien staring at her with something like surprise. She finished the form, raising her arms for one more hammer block and then bringing them down with a slow exhalation to settle her energy. That done, she raised an eyebrow at Tien.

"Like what you see?" she said, putting a hand on her hip. She didn't know Tien that well, but she didn't think he had anything in common with the gym rats who occasionally acted like she didn't belong there. To his credit he flushed slightly.

"Sorry," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "It's just... Where did you learn that?"

Ah. Not sexist, then. But in some ways this was worse.

"My father, of course," she said, keeping her tone deliberately light.

"Oh!" Tien said. "Oh. Huh..."

"Where else would I have learned it?" Videl said baldly, eager to have this over with.

"Oh, I just thought... Well, I don't know what I thought," Tien added lamely.

"My father did win the 24th World Martial Arts Tournament fairly, you know." She tried to keep a handle on her defensiveness, because Tien did look genuinely repentant. "I know compared to you guys he's just a joke, but he is a legitimate martial artist. He trained under Master Gori, who was a graduate of the Rooster School of Martial Arts founded by Master Ondori."

Usually when Videl recited her martial arts heritage the most she got was polite interest, if not outright boredom, but Tien looked intrigued.

"Really?" he said. "I've heard of the Rooster School. Remember?" He turned to Chiaotzu, eyes shining. "Master Shen's great-grandfather fought their Master Niwa once."

"Wait, you don't mean Master Kuren of the Crane School, do you?" Videl said, amazed. When Tien nodded, her amazement turned to brief disbelief. "Weren't they supposed to have leveled a mountain in that fight? I thought it was just a story. Did that really happen?"

Tien shrugged, smiling.

"It's possible there was some exaggeration in the telling," he admitted, "but it's a story that's been handed down in the Crane School. There's every possibility it really happened that way."

She reminded herself she was married to a man who could blow up the planet if he wanted to, and then realized something.

"Were you a student of the Crane School?" she said. Oddly, Tien looked down and away.

"We were," he said simply. "We had to leave a long time ago, but that was where we learned the basics."

Videl hoped she was changing the subject sufficiently, but she was genuinely curious.

"Goku said something once that made it sound like you're the one who taught everyone to fly. Is that true?"

Tien looked like he had bitten down on something sour.

"I could see Goku thinking of it that way," he said wryly. "The truth is I merely demonstrated it and the others picked it up on their own. I heard _you_ can fly."

He cocked an eyebrow at her, ready to be impressed. She shrugged modestly.

"It's barely more than levitating quickly," she said, and was caught off guard when Tien chuckled.

"That's really all it is," he said. "But I take your meaning. Still, that's impressive. Farther than most of my students ever get. How long did it take you to learn?"

Videl tipped her head back and tapped her finger on her chin. "A day or two I think?"

All three of Tien's eyes widened.

"You learned to fly in a day or two? Videl, that's prodigy level. Why didn't you continue with it?"

It was a subject she had discussed ad nauseam with Gohan, and not at all with anyone else. Still, even this subject was better than giving her mind free reign right now.

"I sort of meant to," she said, picking some dirt out from under her fingernail. "I always intended to follow in dad's footsteps, but when I learned he'd been faking everything it sort of soured me on the whole idea. I messed around as a superhero with Gohan for a while, but then we got into college and we didn't have time for that sort of thing anymore. Then I graduated and I told myself I would take a few months to think about it, and then Gohan and I got married and I gave myself a few more months, and then," she shrugged helplessly, "Pan was born, and I realized I didn't want to miss a single minute of her growing up. Doing what my dad did would take me away from her a lot, and both Gohan and I wanted better for her than that. We've both had," she smiled wryly and glanced up at Tien before glancing away, "a lot of experience with parents being gone a lot, and we didn't want her to have to go through that."

Belatedly she realized she had been talking so long she had practically spilled her life story, but Tien only nodded thoughtfully.

"From my perspective as a teacher," he said, resting his elbows on his knees and linking his fingers in front of him, "I can't deny that it seems like a waste of talent. But I've seen too many of my students drop out, or get frustrated and hurt themselves, because they weren't dedicated enough, or they were pursuing martial arts for the wrong reasons."

Videl nodded. She could always tell within a few days which of her dad's new crop of students were going to stay, and it was never the ones looking for glory. It was certainly not the ones who were doing it to please someone else.

"I try to keep up my skills," she said. "But it's hard to find a sparring partner on my level. Most of the people I know are either too strong or too weak."

"True," Tien said, and slipped a finger under his Capsule Corp. wristband while he thought. Then he looked up at Videl. "Would you like to spar with me? There isn't enough room here, but if you learned how to fly in a day, teaching you how to do image training should be a breeze."

"Image training?"

"It's like a more concrete form of visualization," Tien said. "It allows two people to work through a fight or battle beforehand, finding weaknesses in their strategy or developing new ones."

He caught sight of her confused face and chuckled.

"It might be better to just show you," he said, easing himself down from the bench he was sitting on to rest cross-legged on the floor. Videl settled across from him, curious and, as always, eager for something to take her mind off things.

"I'm assuming you can sense ki," Tien said, illuminating an energy ball above the center of his palm. Videl nodded. Tien nodded back, and began moving the energy ball in a simple, graceful pattern.

"Can you still sense it with your eyes closed?" he asked, and she slid her eyes shut. It didn't take much concentration to sense the energy, still moving in the same pattern.

"Yes."

"Good. Now I will change the pattern. Let me know if you can still follow it."

It took a moment to adjust, but she was able to tell that he was now moving the ball up and down.

"I've got it," she said.

"Now try to stay with it," Tien told her. "If at any time you lose track of it, let me know."

Slowly the quality of the sensation changed in some indefinable way. Videl could not have explained how, but somehow she knew that Tien was letting the physical manifestation of his ki dissipate, while maintaining the _idea_ of it in his mind. The sensation was strong enough that she could still track the imaginary ball of energy, even though it no longer existed in the physical world.

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, I see."

As though emerging from the shadows, Tien himself appeared behind the glowing ball in her mind. He was smiling.

"Very good," he said. Videl looked down at herself, realizing that physical information and sensation were now entering her brain not through her body, but through her energy — through her mind. If she concentrated, she could still feel the floor underneath her legs, the hard surface uncomfortable against her seat bones. But at the same time, in a sense nearly as real, she was also standing in front of Tien, her weight shifting over her feet as she looked around.

"Where—" she began, but Tien shook his head.

"It's tempting to try to figure out where we are or what this place is exactly, but it's important to remember that things like space and time don't apply here except as we will them to. This is a meeting of minds, not a physical place we have traveled to."

She studied him, and realized he was wearing his accustomed robes, not the Capsule Corp. tank top and sweatpants he'd been forced to change into. She looked down at herself, and imagined that she was wearing her Great Saiyaman 2 costume, now relegated to a storage closet somewhere on the other side of the house. As soon as she imagined it, it was so, and she glanced up at Tien, who was giving her an indulgent smile.

Embarrassed, she let her clothes flow back to the leggings and old sweater she had been wearing. Looking down at her sweater to see if the words were all spelled right, she could still see Tien out of the corner of her eye, but from this angle there seemed to be something behind him. Looking up at him square on, however, revealed nothing. Glancing back down the large, ill-defined object was back. A second glance up revealed that Tien was looking at her oddly.

"Sorry, it's just —" She gestured vaguely behind him.

"Ah." Tien twisted the angle of his shoulders slightly so she could see behind him more clearly. Instead of a continuation of the formless dark that surrounded them, she saw a large building, in the eastern style and heavily fortified. "If image training is a concrete form of visualization for the purposes of sparring, what you're looking at is a concrete visualization of my mental defenses. You have one too," he added, gesturing behind her, and she turned to look.

Standing there, in a corner of her mind she had never consciously been aware of, was a large fortified building, in style somewhere between the king's palace and the mansion she had grown up in. Its primary purpose was clearly defense, but there was a beauty to its danger. Razor-sharp spikes topped the concrete wall surrounding the main building, but they were shaped like leaves with vines growing around them. There were machine gun turrets that faced in every direction, but they were draped with hanging flowers that hid them from view. Videl had never imagined such a building with her waking mind, but it was nonetheless familiar.

Being Mr. Satan's daughter had smoothed her way in the world quite a bit, but there had always been those who took exception to her gender and slight stature, and she had learned from an early age to either shrug off their comments or prove them wrong in a way they couldn't argue with, usually a punch in the mouth. Though she had not, until this moment, been aware of it, during those confrontations she had gone to a certain place in her mind, and this building _was_ that place.

She turned back around to look at Tien's, and noticed it was quite a bit bigger and better fortified than hers. She lifted her chin in a manner that indicated the height of the building behind him. "Is yours like that because you're stronger than me?"

He tilted his head in a gesture that was neither affirmative nor negative.

"Larger amounts of ki go a long way towards defending against mental attacks, but simply being stronger is no substitute for training. Theoretically it's possible to have enough mental discipline that you could match me even with the amount of ki you have. People like Goku and Vegeta, who have both training and ki, are almost impenetrable."

Videl slowly clenched her fists. "And some space Emperor took them all over without even being on the same planet."

Tien nodded gravely. "If it weren't for Bulma's assurance that she can, in fact, make a device that blocks psychic energy, I'm not sure there would be any point to us traveling to Ophidia in the first place."

They stood in sober silence for a moment. Videl was aware that he had been avoiding talking about such things with the others for fear of dampening their morale. She rather wished he hadn't talked about it with her. After a moment Tien shifted, placing one foot slightly behind the other.

"I apologize for being so morbid," he said, lifting one hand in invitation. "We were going to spar, weren't we?"

Videl crouched down as well, a small smile tugging itself across her face in spite of everything.

"Go easy on me," she said. Tien nodded, and crooked his fingers in invitation.

It was true that Videl had not sparred with anyone in several years. But despite that, she worked hard to keep her battle instincts sharp, and she could tell immediately that Tien was not taking this completely seriously. Despite knowing full well he was miles ahead of her both in strength and experience, she wanted to make him work for his victory. She moved in tentatively, as though unsure of herself, and he blocked each blow easily.

"Not bad," he said, smiling, clearly wanting to encourage her, and the fact that he was sincere made the praise even more galling to her pride. Still, it meant the deception was working.

She let herself get into a rhythm, and when she was sure he would be least expecting it, she crouched down low out of rhythm and stuck her leg out to attempt a sweep. He hopped over it, but only barely. "Very nice," he said, and there was a note of surprise in his voice. A bubble of exultation rose in her chest, but she fought it down. Now he would be more wary of her.

Sure enough, he switched from only blocking to adding a few strikes of his own, though he was clearly pulling them — by a lot. A rush of adrenaline (Videl hadn't realized how much she _missed_ the sensation) pounded through her body as she got a sense of just how far out of her league Tien really was. Each time his fist stopped millimeters from her body she could feel the killing force behind it. He could break her bones and pulverize her organs without even meaning to. The amount of self-control he was exercising was massive, but the thrill of fear that came from this realization only added welcome spice to her adrenaline rush, and despite herself Videl could feel her lips pull back from her teeth in a wild grin.

He came in with a massive punch, likely intending to use it to end the spar, and Videl, with only milliseconds to spare, twisted out of the way, grabbed his arm, and tried to use his momentum to throw him. It was a move she had used many times on opponents far bigger and stronger than her, and she could tell she had taken him by surprise. With his surprise, however, came a loss of some of his self-control, and he kicked her a little harder than he probably meant to.

She went flying, and for the first time since the spar began she remembered this wasn't real. It was a good thing, too, because his kick had broken her imaginary ribs. A belt of pain tightened around her imaginary lungs and restricted her from breathing deeply, and to counteract it she took a deep breath with her real lungs. The two sensations mixed oddly, but somehow comfortingly. It reminded her that the pain she was feeling was all in her mind. Instructive, yes. But not real.

"I'm so sorry!" Tien said, blood draining from his imaginary face. He started towards her. "Are you all right?"

Her opening had come. With the realization that none of this was real, Videl saw her chance. Without even bothering to pick herself up, she brought her hands together and, with a shout, released a huge wave of energy that slammed into Tien, sending him flying back much farther than he had sent her. She lay for a moment, breathing shallowly, and then took the idea of her ribs being broken and slowly released it. The pain ceased, and she stood. Tien stood as well, wincing.

"I thought you said you couldn't use ki attacks," Tien said, sounding put out but also a little impressed.

"I can't," she said, "not in real life anyway. But this isn't real life, is it?"

Tien put his hands on his hips and regarded her with an exasperated smile. "That is known as cheating. The point of image training is to prepare to fight in real life. Simply imagining fantastic powers you don't have defeats the purpose."

The smile Videl gave him was guilty, and a little embarrassed. Now that he pointed it out, her move had been quite outside the spirit of things. She would not make the same mistake twice.

But there was still a part of her, deep down in the place where she still craved danger and adrenaline, that felt only triumph.


	7. Chapter 7

_His cheek itched where a piece of thatching poked it, but Chiaotzu lay still on the roof of the kitchen house, waiting for his prey. Bao was a fat faced, clumsy oaf who only picked on Chiaotzu because there was no one else lower than him on the totem pole, but today Chiaotzu was going to put a permanent stop to that._

_He had discovered, during the long hours of meditation Master Shen forced them to endure, that with great effort he could peek into the minds of those around him. According to Master Shen, being able to see someone's memories was a high-level technique, but Chiaotzu had discovered something far more interesting._

_He had never had luck trying it with the Masters, their minds hard and impenetrable, and it was too difficult even with the higher-level acolytes to really be worth it. But when he turned his attention to those weaker than him, he found he could see more than just the memory of what they had eaten for breakfast that morning. He could see... **them**. It felt almost like he was traipsing around some stranger's living room, and today he was going to find out if he was strong enough to rearrange the furniture._

_It was a bright, chilly day in early spring, and Chiaotzu could hear Bao's rustling footsteps as he tiptoed through the grass leading up to the back of the building. One of the things Chiaotzu had discovered while rummaging around Bao's mind was that he had found a way to sneak food without getting caught. In addition to getting Bao to leave him alone, Chiaotzu also planned to use this information for his own gain. Master Shen told them hunger sharpened the mind, but Chiaotzu hated the pinched feeling in his belly and it hardly seemed fair that someone so fat should keep the spoils of unattended pork buns all to himself. He closed his eyes, settled his breathing as Master Shen had taught them, and before long he caught the feeling of Bao's mind._

_He was unsure if he was merely visualizing something that could not be seen to make it easier to think about, or if what he was experiencing was actually real, but either way he found himself outside a small cottage, where it was the work of a moment to vault over the small bamboo fence and open the unlocked door. The inside of the building smelled like Bao's sleeping pallet, a sour milk smell lingering enough that, even though technically nobody owned their sleeping pallets, Bao always found his returned to him._

_The contents of the building were few, shabby, and scattered haphazardly. Chiaotzu ignored the glazed pot, the toy boat, the kitchen fire, each promising to represent a memory or a personality trait if only he took the time to study it. Instead he made his way unerringly to the rug at the center of the floor, which he kicked aside to reveal a trapdoor. He could feel the lurking horrors down there, and a wicked grin stole over his pale face as he hooked his fingers into the ring and pulled._

_A stench like the sour milk smell but far stronger and mingled with other scents hit him so hard his eyes watered. If this was a visualization, it was an awfully detailed one. Once the first wave had subsided, and he plugged his nose with one hand, Chiaotzu took the rickety stairs down into the small cellar, crudely carved out of the earth. Millipedes scattered out of his way, burrowing directly into the sides of the cellar, and he found himself brushing away cobwebs. Clearly Bao preferred to take his frustrations out on Chiaotzu rather than deal with his own problems._

_Disdainfully Chiaotzu looked around, wondering what he had to work with. The cellar was crowded, junk tossed everywhere even more haphazardly than the contents of the upstairs, and all of it was disused and dusty._

_One object far newer than the rest caught Chiaotzu's eye, and he waded through the detritus to pick up a tiny cloth doll that looked like Master Shen. The stern expression on its face, despite being depicted with button eyes and a mouth made of stitching, was instantly recognizable, and it gave Chiaotzu almost as much dread as it seemed to give Bao. This would do nicely._

_Ascending the stairs once again he took the glazed pot, which seemed to be in a place of honor, and replaced it with the doll. It seemed to glower at the entire room as though nothing it saw pleased it and never would. Figuring that such a minor change would be a nice place to start, Chiaotzu resisted the temptation to smash every object in the house and left, even closing the door behind him and locking it for good measure. What kind of naïve idiot didn't even lock his own doors?_

_Opening his eyes, he found the roof thatching still poking his cheek, the air still chilly and clear, but Bao's footsteps had stopped. After a moment of straining his ears Chiaotzu was pleased to hear short, sharp breaths that indicated muffled sobs. After another few moments the footsteps turned the way they had come, moving quicker and less surely. Bao had apparently abandoned his quest for pork buns._

_Surprised at how quickly he'd been able to achieve results, Chiaotzu smiled to himself. He waited a few more moments until he was sure no one was looking, and then hopped down from the roof and helped himself to the unattended pork buns, making sure to take an extra one for Tien._

* * *

"How about now?" Bulma asked, adjusting the chinstrap of a bicycle helmet on her head. It was stuck through with wires and electrodes, some of which she had attached to herself. Cautiously Chiaotzu reached out. Just like he had back at Videl's house he quickly found the dreamlike version of Capsule Corp. that was Bulma's mental defenses. Also just like then he cautiously peeked through the door, but this time Bulma was right there in the thick of things, awake and alert.

He withdrew as soon as he had confirmed he could enter.

"Still there," he said, chin propped on his hands.

"Are you kidding me?" Bulma tore the contraption off and threw it down on the work table, glaring at Chiaotzu as though he had personally been the cause of her failure. "This is stupid. Brain waves are just electricity when you get right down to it. Why isn't this working?"

"Because the mind is more than just electricity," Chiaotzu told her, and she rolled her eyes before he even finished the sentence he'd been repeating all morning. She flopped down on a seat and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her lab coat pocket, shaking one out in her hand and holding it between her fingers.

"Mom," Trunks said from across the room, his tone a warning.

"I'm not gonna light it," Bulma said, rolling her eyes again. She sat with one leg propped on her opposite knee, the cigarette dangling from her grasp, and her eyes went unfocused as her body relaxed. "What is the mind, then, if it's not just electricity?"

She had been speaking to herself, possibly not even aware she had spoken out loud, but Chiaotzu decided to answer her anyway.

"The mind is the wind. Our bodies are the trees which are moved by the wind. We do not see the wind, but we see the trees move, thus we know the wind is there."

Bulma's eyes came back to the present and she gave Chiaotzu a skeptical look. He shrugged.

"That's what the monks say," he said.

"Okay, but what does Chiaotzu say?" Bulma asked. "You're the one who actually reads minds and stuff. What does that _feel_ like? What are you _doing_ , exactly?"

Chiaotzu shrugged again.

"I just... reach out and feel them."

"But feel them with what? What are you feeling the other minds _with_?"

"My mind," Chiaotzu said, and Bulma groaned. She tilted her head back to look at the ceiling, and brought the cigarette to her lips, looking down at it in confusion as she realized it wasn't lit.

"You know, I know you're not trying to be difficult," she said to the cigarette. "But my life would be a lot easier if you could just say what you mean."

Chiaotzu thought that _his_ life would be a lot easier if Bulma would stop thinking of everything in terms of electricity, but he kept this observation to himself.

"Hey, I have a question for you," Bulma said. "When I was asleep that morning, you said you went into my mind to wake me up. What was that all about? I know most of you martial arts guys can read minds, but I thought you just looked at memories."

Chiaotzu gathered up a small handful of nuts and bolts from the table and began juggling them telekinetically.

"Mostly, yes." He paused, alternating patterns in his juggling until Bulma grew impatient and prodded him. "I don't know if it's just an ability I have, or if the others never bothered trying to learn, but sometimes I can... go deeper. It's hard to explain, but sometimes I can make small changes, like when I woke you up."

He looked up from his juggling to find Bulma staring at him with an almost angry incredulity.

"Are you saying you can _change_ someone's _mind_? Like, change what they're thinking? Or who they are? What do you mean?"

Chiaotzu added another handful of screws, the swirling pattern floating in front of him now almost as big as his head.

"I... yes. I can make changes. I don't know exactly how it works or what I'm changing, though."

"Chiaotzu!" Peeking through the spinning metal dodecahedron Chiaotzu could see that most of Bulma's incredulity was gone, leaving only anger. "If you can make changes to people's brains, _why the hell didn't you do that sooner_?"

The metal framework stopped in midair.

"Do... what? Do what sooner?"

Bulma pushed the abstract glob of metal parts aside so she could look Chiaotzu in the eye.

"Chiaotzu, you have _died_. More than once. If you could have changed their minds so they didn't want to kill you, why didn't you do that?"

After a moment's pause, during which he stared at Bulma with almost as much incredulity as she was staring at him, he leaned back in his seat and made the collection of scrap metal start to swirl around his head like rings around a planet.

"It doesn't work if they're stronger than me," he said sullenly. He wasn't going to tell her that when facing down the likes of King Piccolo or Nappa, the subtle arts of mind manipulation had been the furthest thing from his thoughts, and that if he had remembered, he might well have given it a try regardless of the fact that: "Even trying would have probably killed me."

She twirled the unlit cigarette between her fingers as she digested that.

"Killed you how?"

"Huh?"

"How would it have killed you to try to make them not want to kill you?"

Chiaotzu introduced long undulating waves into the spinning ring around his head.

"I'm not sure," he said.

"Then how do you know it would kill you?"

Chiaotzu rolled his eyes.

"I just know."

Bulma let loose another deep sigh of frustration and again tried to take a puff out of her unlit cigarette.

"Okay, forget that for a second. You said you don't know if it's an innate ability or not. But anyone can learn to read minds, right? I'm positive I heard Goku or Roshi say something like that once."

"Yes, anyone can learn to do that."

"Then what's the difference?"

"I guess there isn't one," Chiaotzu was forced to concede after a moment's thought.

"So anyone can learn how to mess around with someone else's mind?" Bulma's horror was understandable, but Chiaotzu was pretty sure the number of people creatively depraved enough to make the leap from passive reading to active changing was small, and he hated that he was among their number.

"Technically I guess that's right. Most martial artists beyond a certain level have some skill with the mental arts."

"What does martial arts have to do with it?"

Chiaotzu glanced up at Bulma to see if she was joking. She didn't seem to be. He looked back down at his juggling.

"Everything. The mental discipline and ki control you learn through martial arts is —"

"Ki?" Bulma said, sitting bold upright. "Are you saying you use ki to read minds?"

Chiaotzu looked back up at her, bewildered at the strange question. But Bulma was already digging through one of the myriad storage boxes that comprised her traveling lab.

"I... guess? I mean, yes. But that's not —"

"Here," Bulma said as she popped back up, holding a small device and clicking the button on it. As quick as a candle being snuffed out, Bulma died.

Or at least it felt that way. Chiaotzu gasped and his floating globule of nuts and screws clattered to the floor. Both Tien and Krillin lifted their heads out of their meditation, turning to stare at Bulma in horror, and Trunks leaped across the room in one bound, landing next to his mother and glancing over her wildly. Still holding the device in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Bulma smirked at them all.

"Like it?" she said. "I made it a few years ago when Vegeta was annoying the hell out of me, but I couldn't figure out what other uses it might have besides hiding from you ki users."

"Mom, what did you do?" Trunks demanded in a panic. Bulma clicked the button again and instantly came back to life. Tien got to his feet, Videl watching the proceedings with some amount of confusion.

"You made a device that blocks ki energy?" Tien demanded of Bulma. She nodded triumphantly. He shook his head slowly. "Bulma, that's..."

"Brilliant?"

"Terrifying."

Bulma pouted at Tien and clicked the button again.

"Well?" she said to Chiaotzu, who shivered at the sensation of talking to someone with no discernable energy. "Can you still read my mind?"

Chiaotzu was afraid to even try, but he dutifully reached out. Instead of a horrifying void, he found only a barrier that, with minimal effort, he could push through. On the other side was Bulma, just as she always was. Withdrawing from behind the barrier meant he lost sight of her again. He knew Bulma was waiting impatiently for an explanation, but all he could muster was a shrug. To his relief Tien stepped in before Bulma could excoriate him for his vagueness.

"You've made a very effective camouflage," he said, "but that's all. Anyone who knows the trick will still be able to read your mind."

Bulma clicked off the ki hiding device, allowing everyone in the room to relax again.

"Oh, believe me, by the time I'm done I'll have you all in mental armor so thick no one will be able to get through."

Chiaotzu could feel Tien gearing up for a lecture on the dangers of closing one's mind off completely, and he sent his friend a mental plea to leave off, at least for now. Bulma was already hard at work digging through her boxes for more components, having forgotten everyone in the room, and Chiaotzu didn't think he could take more questioning from a mad scientist.

* * *

Videl awoke with a long gasp. She remembered where she was fast enough that her exhale was slow and controlled, and she lay just breathing for a while.

Most of the time after a nightmare Videl could simply concentrate on the fact that she was awake and think on a happy memory for a few minutes before the dream would dissipate and she could roll over and go back to sleep. But tonight, all she could think about was the last image she had seen before awakening — a man that looked like Gohan but with blank patches of skin instead of eyes standing over Pan's crib. She didn't even know what it was the not-Gohan had wanted. The dream was utter nonsense in the waking world, but the feeling of dread, cold as drowning, lingered despite her efforts to logic it away.

When it was clear she wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep she got up and exited the capsule house she shared with Bulma, wishing she found the sight of two houses sitting in the middle of a cargo bay as amusing as she did during the daytime. The other house was for the male crewmembers, and, since it was the same size as the girl's house, was probably cramped. So Videl wasn't surprised to find, upon reaching out with her energy to see if anyone else was awake, that one of them was upstairs on the bridge. Silently she floated up the hatch in case whoever it was was sleeping, but to her surprise she found Krillin, not just awake, but training.

"Can't sleep?" she asked, and he lowered his arms from where he'd been punching the air, looking sheepish.

"Can't seem to really train either. You having trouble sleeping too?"

"Nightmare," she said simply. Krillin nodded.

"Want to talk about it?"

Videl buried her hands in the cuffs of the longsleeved shirt of Gohan's she had been using for pajamas. Despite having been wearing hers when Bulma called, she had forgotten to actually pack them. The shirt was just some corporate swag Gohan had gotten from a conference a few years ago, and she wasn't sure he'd ever worn it. But even if it didn't actually smell like him, she could pretend it did.

"Gohan and I… We're fighting."

Somehow saying the words out loud made the whole thing sound less important than it felt. Couples fought every day. It wasn't the end of the world. Even though it felt like it. Krillin raised both eyebrows.

"Wow, I didn't know you guys disagreed on anything. What are you fighting about?"

Videl shook her head. The dream — _a Gohan who was not Gohan standing over Pan's crib_ — still stuck in her mind like a bad aftertaste. "It's not that, it's nothing big. I just... I don't want the last thing I said to him to be..."

What _was_ the last thing she had said to him? Her last words in their fight still echoed in her ears, but had she said goodbye when he left the house? When he told her he was going to see Piccolo, looking anywhere but at her, had she acknowledged his words? Krillin murmured his understanding.

"Eighteen probably thinks I forgot her birthday. We were going to throw her and Seventeen a surprise party. Don't tell her, but I was going to propose again, make it a whole thing." Krillin grinned, but it was too brittle to be convincing and he soon dropped it. "The party would have been today."

Videl didn't know what to say, and they stood in uneasy silence for a moment. Then Krillin sat down on one of the seats that faced the front window, giving them a view of the stars streaking by.

"You know," he said, making himself comfortable, "this whole trip is reminding me of the time I went to Namek with Gohan and Bulma."

It was as obvious a conversation shift as Videl could imagine, and she blessed him for it.

"I thought Goku went with you guys," she said, sitting down next to him. She could feel the nightmare begin to ooze away. Krillin shook his head.

"No, he came later."

Videl did the mental math and frowned. "Wait, you're telling me Chi-Chi let Gohan go to space _by himself_?"

Krillin contrived to look offended.

"He wasn't by himself. He was with me. And Bulma."

Videl chuckled.

"He was, what, four years old?"

"Five. Or, wait, maybe he was six?"

Videl shook her head. "And Chi-Chi agreed to let him out of her sight?"

Krillin waffled. "There wasn't much agreeing. Gohan didn't really give her a choice."

" _Gohan_?" Videl stared at Krillin, waiting for the punchline. Krillin just grinned at her. "Gohan disobeyed his mother. To her _face_."

Krillin grinned a moment longer, then turned solemn. "I imagine he felt pretty guilty. Piccolo did die for him, after all."

Videl almost asked him to explain, before remembering that she did actually know this story. Just not, apparently, all of it.

"You know," she said, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them, "no one's ever told me the whole Namek story start to finish. I just get fragments every now and then. I know it's hard for you guys to talk about, but..."

"I could tell you right now." Krillin's smile told her he was not just offering to be polite.

"Well, we've got time," she said with an answering smile, and they talked until morning.

* * *

Goten had just finished the last level in his video game and was trying to decide if he wanted to turn around and start again from the beginning when Bulma stood up and yelled triumphantly, waving a metal hoop in the air and demanding everyone's attention.

"I had a hell of a time getting this to work," she said once they were all assembled. "But once I realized I was basically making a Faraday cage, everything fell into place."

She placed the hoop around her temples like a circlet, and then looked at Chiaotzu expectantly.

"Well?"

Chiaotzu seemed skeptical at first, but soon his expression grew alarmed, and he faced Bulma with a look of pure concentration. After a few minutes he slowly put his arms around himself and shook his head.

"It works," he said, but he sounded like he wished it hadn't. Goten looked up at Tien, who was standing next to him, and shivered at the creeping horror he could see on his face. He wasn't sure what they found so disturbing. He could still feel Bulma's life energy as strong as ever.

"I don't know how you did it," Tien said grimly, "but I don't think anyone will be able to break through that."

"Of course not," Bulma said breezily, taking off the headband. "I need all of you to try this on so I can make sure I don't need to calibrate it to individual brain patterns."

Videl tried it on first, and Chiaotzu shook his head. Videl shrugged and handed the headband to Krillin, who got a similar result. Krillin handed it to Goten, and when he put it on he didn't feel any different. The metal was slightly warm, but that might have been just from having been held in everyone's hands. He passed it along and was already thinking about his video game again when he heard Chiaotzu groan.

He turned in time to see Chiaotzu pull the headband off, his face crumpled in pain, clutching his temples. Tien knelt swiftly next to his friend.

"It gives me a headache," Chiaotzu said, his voice high-pitched with pain. Tien put a hand on his friend's forehead, and slowly Chiaotzu's expression eased. After a minute Tien looked up at Bulma, who was hovering over them.

"I think it's an effect of not being able to use his powers," he said. "If you make it weaker he'll be detectable, right?"

"It's not a matter of making it weaker or stronger," Bulma said. "It's either on or it's off. Increasing the signal strength just increases the range. Technically I could make it cover a whole city, but for our purposes short range made more sense."

"Maybe you'll get used to it," Krillin said hopefully. Chiaotzu looked back down at the hoop still in his hands, then slowly placed it over his temples again. The second it touched his head he grimaced and gritted his teeth, but he didn't take it off. After a minute of watching him struggle, Trunks spoke up.

"If it's hurting him because he's good at mind-reading, then what would it do if we put one on Zema?"

They all looked at each other. Chiaotzu shuddered and took the headband off again, but Bulma nodded slowly.

"I'll see if I have enough for an extra one," she said, and sat back down at the worktable.

"Do they have to look like this?" Videl said, as Trunks tried on the hoop next. "It doesn't really look like a fashion accessory, and the less attention we draw to ourselves the better."

"You have a point," Bulma said, "but it's not like I brought my bedazzling kit. I don't have anything to make them pretty with."

"That's okay, we can figure something out. If we cover it up, that won't block the signal, right?"

"Nope," Bulma said absently, already deep in her work. Videl caught Goten's eye and nodded for him to come sit with her at the table. Making jewelry didn't appeal to him much, but it was better than playing the same videogame for the fourth time in a row. To his surprise Trunks sat down at the table as well, fiddling with the hoop and handing it over without even a sarcastic comment when Videl asked for it. Her plan was to take bits of leftover wire and components and fasten them to the hoop, attempting to make it look like a piece of jewelry. Soon she and Goten fell into a discussion of the merits of dangling jewels, each taking one side of the argument, not because either of them cared, but because they were both desperate for something to occupy their thoughts.

"They won't get in the way if they're short enough," Videl argued mildly.

"Maybe. But I think they would be distracting," Goten countered, lining up bits of leftover solder on the tabletop. He turned to Trunks. "What do you think?"

"I don't give a damn," Trunks explained, mockingly patient. Face flushing, Goten gathered up the bits of solder and crushed them in his hand. Videl turned to Trunks and spoke gently.

"Come on, Trunks, help me make this look nice."

"I can easily think of a thousand other things that would be a better use of my time," Trunks said in the same tone he had used on Goten, and that was the last straw. Goten stood up, fixing Trunks with a glare.

"Trunks, what is your problem?"

There was a tight, prickly feeling in his skin that felt like a sunburn, and it was so strong it was almost distracting. Goten ignored it.

"What are you talking about?" Trunks was disdainful, but he was looking everywhere but at Goten. "I don't have a problem."

Unbelievable! Goten slammed his hands down on the table, making all the pieces jump several inches into the air.

"You do _so_ have a problem, Trunks. You've had nothing but a bad attitude for —"

"If I have a _bad attitude_ , Goten," Trunks hissed, rising to his feet, "it's because I'm worried about my dad."

"My dad's missing too, Trunks." Goten felt feverish, especially right behind his eyes, which burned like he'd been staring at a fire. "But I'm not using it as an excuse to be nasty to everyone."

Trunks sneered.

"That's because you're used to him being gone."

Goten's fist flew without his consent or forethought. He watched, grimly pleased, as it landed square on Trunks' stupid face, knocking him to the floor.

_How dare he?_

How dare he throw that in his face, like Goten hadn't asked to let him secretly pretend Vegeta was his dad back when he was four and he had been allowed to sleep over for the first time?

How dare he say that when Trunks had quietly started having sleepovers at Goten's like it was the most natural thing in the world, because Goku had just come back and Goten hadn't wanted to leave his dad's side?

How dare he act like he had the _right_ to be nasty and mean, when Goten had been nothing but patient — with Trunks, with his dad, with _everyone_ — for his entire life?

How _dare_ he?

Goten drew his fist back for another punch, but at the apex of his draw, he saw the expression on Trunks' face, and the full, crackling heat of his fury drained into his stomach and transmuted into something worse, something uglier.

Trunks was _surprised_.

He was staring at Goten in shock, not even bothering to staunch the flow of blood streaming from his nose, looking for all the world like a sweet, beloved pet had just bitten him for no reason. Like he had no idea what he'd done. Like he didn't deserve it, utterly and completely.

The sunburn feeling was gone, replaced by a block of ice resting heavily in the pit of his stomach. Goten realized that all the grown-ups were staring at him in shock as well. He lowered his fist and held it trembling at his side.

Trunks, he knew, would have a cool one-liner ready, something to give him the last word as he walked away. But Goten could still barely think straight, so he turned around and left the room without another word.


	8. Chapter 8

Their first glimpse of the planet Ophidia was a small brown smudge in the middle of the viewscreen, but by now it had swallowed most of the view, a dusty rocky landscape with one green spot in the southern hemisphere.

"This is not going to work," Krillin muttered as Bulma adjusted her flight path to the final approach.

"Shut up," Bulma snarled.

"You already voiced your concerns yesterday," Tien said, pulling at the chest plate of his Galactic Patrol uniform, found crumpled in one of the storage rooms of the cargo bay and at least two sizes too small for him. "We all decided this was the best course of action. Losing your nerve now is pointless."

"Pointless, sure," Krillin said sarcastically. "Because that's how I judge when to lose my nerve. Whether or not there's any point to it."

Videl picked at a loose thread on the cuff of her sweater, trying to concentrate on the feel of the thread in her fingers instead of the clanging of her nerves. They had hashed out a cover story the night before, and although a Christmas sweater wasn't what she would've opted to wear on vacation, it was the nicest thing she had shoved into her duffel bag. She was counting on aliens not knowing what a Christmas tree was.

Since they were traveling in a Galactic patrol ship, they decided it was best to pretend to be two Galactic patrolmen out on vacation with their families. She and Krillin had giggled far more than the situation deserved upon realizing it was best for the two of them to pretend to be a couple.

"Families attract a lot less attention," Bulma had said. "You at least look like you could be related to Goten."

"Whaddya think, _son_?" Krillin had asked Goten, jabbing him in the side with his elbow. Goten had merely edged away and scowled. Krillin had laughed anyway. Bulma had attempted to goad Tien, her undercover husband, in a similar manner, but he had apparently decided to treat the entire absurd situation as though it weren't happening at all, and had ignored her completely.

"So far so good," Bulma said now, flipping a few switches as the spacecraft hit atmosphere. "There's an automatic system guiding me down. That means they're not too suspicious of strangers."

"Or we're walking into a trap," Krillin muttered again. The giggles from last night had deflated into sullen nerves.

"Zip it, Krillin, I mean it," Bulma snapped. "I need to concentrate."

All of them spent the rest of the ride down in terse silence, each thinking similar thoughts: their plan — finding their loved ones and putting the faraday headbands on each of them to remove Zema's influence — was laughably simplistic, and in a few minutes they would find out if the worst had happened and Zema was somehow aware of their presence.

Tien and Krillin had hashed it out through many long evenings of back-and-forth, and they had decided it was an acceptable risk to assume Zema might not know they were coming. Even if he had read all of Bulma's thoughts during the period she couldn't remember, Bulma had no spaceship and none of them had any idea who Zema was without the help of Zuno and the Galactic Patrol, factors it was unlikely Zema had accounted for. If they kept a low profile and didn't draw attention to themselves, they might be able to move undetected and look for their friends.

But there were too many unknowns to count on their secrecy completely, and there was every possibility they would be taken into custody or killed the moment they set foot on the planet. Rather than think about this morbid possibility, Videl tried to concentrate on the planet growing before her.

The green spot that sat just below the equator like a belly button grew larger as they descended towards it. Buildings and plant life grew in detail, silvery veins becoming roads, green smudges becoming parks. Every body of water except one had regular, straight lined edges, the only exception being a large river that spilled down from some mountains to the north and sliced the city in two. As they came even closer they saw a large gray patch near the southeastern edge of the city that soon resolved itself into a spaceport. They landed gently, each of them breathing out a quiet sigh of relief despite the fact that the most dangerous part was yet to come.

"Okay, gang," Bulma said with forced cheer, getting out of her seat. "Let's go see what's waiting for us."

"Everyone stay on your guard," Tien said.

"Don't _look_ like you're on your guard," Bulma scolded. "Remember, we're supposed to be on vacation."

Tien and Krillin led the way down the gangplank. Videl tried not to gawk at first, but then she remembered that, as a tourist, that was exactly what she should be doing.

The heat was the first thing she noticed. After the cold, recycled air of space it was initially welcome, but then it settled on her shoulders like a weight, and she pushed the sleeves of her sweater up past her elbows, knowing she would be drenched in sweat before long. They were in an open plain, standing on a perfect circle of concrete or asphalt stamped into the middle of a grassy field. A walkway of the same material led toward a beautifully designed building made of sweeping patterns of silvery metal embedded in cream-colored adobe. As they watched, a small cart with covered seating emerged from the building and came straight toward them. The quiet hum of its electric motor, audible even this far away, highlighted the fact that the air was completely silent, devoid of even the scream of cicadas or the rustling of wind in the grass.

"Here we go," Krillin muttered as the cart grew closer.

"Remember, let me do the talking," Bulma whispered. Eventually the cart reached them, turning in a wide, slow circle so that it faced them broadside. There was only one person inside, and they leapt out as soon as they stopped, bowing low.

It was immediately clear that they were the same race as the assailant at Capsule Corp., but younger and female. Where the assailant had a short tuft of hair on the top of his head, hers was longer and thicker, twisted into a braid that reached most of the way down her back. Her scales were a brighter shade of copper than his, and when she smiled at them they could see she lacked his curved fangs. Coming up from the bow she surveyed them, and immediately her face fell. Videl felt Krillin tense beside her, but he didn't have time to do more than quietly suck in a breath before the girl spoke.

"Oh, you're _mammals_ ," she said, sounding dismayed. "I should've brought the air-conditioned cart. You are mammals, right? Oh, no, before that, are you here on business or pleasure?"

She seemed nervous, and her voice sounded even younger than she looked. Videl placed her around Goten's age, assuming these aliens matured at the same rate as humans. She wondered what a girl so young was doing working as a tour guide, for that seemed to be her function, confirmed when Bulma answered.

"Pleasure," she said. "We're on our first vacation in ages and we intend to enjoy ourselves."

The girl's face lit up as quickly as it had crumpled into dismay.

"Wonderful!" She clasped her hands and then gestured to the cart. "We'll start with a tour of the city, and then I'll take you to your accommodations."

They were halfway seated in the cart, Tien having taken the rear seat and looking more like their bodyguard than one of their fellow pleasure seekers, when the girl gave another exclamation of dismay.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I almost forgot. Do you have any luggage?"

Videl was not sure how to answer that. They each had a couple of capsules in their pockets, but it occurred to her to wonder for the first time whether other planets had yet to discover something as basic as capsule technology. Bulma answered for them.

"We're traveling pretty light. In fact, we'd like to go clothes shopping first, if you don't mind. This was all kind of a last minute thing, and none of us have anything suitable for this climate."

"Oh, absolutely! I know just the place. Once you're all aboard, we'll get the tour started, and I'll make sure to stop at a boutique just down the road from here."

The ride was smooth, and their guide drove fast enough that there was a slight breeze, welcome in the dry, oppressive heat. She introduced herself as Rin, and drove them to a smaller building than the spaceport but in the same style of adobe adorned with metal. It turned out to be the boutique, and inside were friendly, helpful shopkeepers and light, flowing clothes that the shopkeepers assured them were designed to help mammals keep cool in the desert heat. Videl found herself dressed in a blue and turquoise robe with a red sash, and they were all relieved to find that headdresses were common here. Videl had adorned her faraday headband so that it looked like a piece of jewelry, but most of the others had to wear headgear anyway to conceal their distinctive profiles or hair, and they had simply covered the headbands with hats or headscarves.

Once they had all made their selections, opting to change right there in the store, Bulma reached into her pocket and addressed the head shopkeeper.

"All right, how much?"

The shopkeeper, a middle-aged woman with high cheekbones and scales so dark they were almost black, chuckled uncomfortably and looked at Rin in elegant confusion. The girl, who had been chatting amiably with Goten, brought both hands to her cheeks and looked aghast.

"I completely forgot to tell them! Oh, I am the worst tour guide ever."

She looked genuinely upset, and the older woman gently put her hand on Rin's shoulder.

"This is your first assignment, isn't it?" she said kindly. Rin nodded miserably. The woman smiled. "Then take a deep breath and remember to enjoy yourself. You were given this job because it is the kind of work you're suited for. Lord Zema is pleased when we work hard, but he is more pleased when we work with joy."

Upon hearing the name Videl felt a cold shiver run through her despite the ambient heat, and a surreptitious look around told her her friends felt the same. Rin nodded, oblivious to their discomfort.

"You're right," she said, squaring her shoulders and smiling broadly. "I appreciate the reminder." She turned to the rest of them and gently clasped her hands behind her back. "Here on Ophidia first-time tourists receive everything complimentary. There will be no shop or pleasure garden closed to you, and no trinket or food item that will not be given to you freely. These clothes are yours to keep at no charge to you."

Bulma glanced at the rest of them in incredulity, and then looked back at Rin.

"No offense, but that sounds too good to be true. There's got to be a catch."

Rin's cheeks dimpled as she held back a grin.

"No catch. The government will compensate any place of business you visit. Our Emperor wants his visitors to feel as welcome as possible."

Bulma set her hands on her hips.

"And why is that?" she said baldly. Rin looked confused.

"Why does... he want you to feel welcome?" she repeated, as though she couldn't possibly have heard Bulma correctly. Bulma nodded. Rin shrugged. "Don't you want people to feel welcome in your home?"

Bulma looked ready to argue some more, but Trunks broke in with no small amount of exasperation.

"Mom, if she says it's free, then it's free. Let her take us on the rest of the tour already."

Videl couldn't tell how much of his surly teenage attitude was intentional verisimilitude and how much was the bad attitude Goten had called him on, but either way it worked. They climbed back into the cart with their shopping bags and started the tour in earnest.

The city was beautiful, full of lush green parks and aesthetically pleasing buildings, as though the arid, uninhabitable desert just outside the city limits were a suggestion and not a fact of nature. The city lay on top of a huge underground aquifer, which had created a natural network of caves further hollowed out by hand in more violent times when places of retreat were necessary. But, Rin assured them with a carefree chuckle, there had been no war on Ophidia in over a hundred years. They still fought wars, she told them, her laughter turning to a sorrow that did not seem affected, but only to free the rest of the galaxy from the tyranny of the likes of Frieza. Having brought peace to his own people, Lord Zema did not feel it right to leave other creatures in the grip of cruelty and conflict.

Upon hearing this information, Krillin looked up at Videl with wide, incredulous eyes, but all she could do was shrug. Propaganda was a powerful tool, and people were perfectly happy to believe lies as long as they were pleasant, no matter how far-fetched. Her father was proof of that.

Halfway through the tour they stopped in front of a large statue that Rin informed them was of Lord Zema in his youth. They all got out of the cart, ostensibly to stretch their legs and enjoy the sweet smelling garden surrounding the statue. Tien stood rooted, staring up at it as though trying to memorize its features. After a few minutes they all found themselves gathered around him, staring up with him, each thinking their separate thoughts. Rin joined them, also gazing up at the statue, though the look on her face was one of dreamy adoration.

After that Videl spent the rest of the tour in a half waking stupor, trees and buildings and landmarks blurring together as they slid past her. The sight of Gohan's face, though only in her mind, seemed more real than what was right in front of her. She didn't know what she had been expecting, but a city-sized pleasure garden full of happy, productive citizens had not been it.

The cart slowed to a stop, and Videl took a deep breath, trying to wake herself up. They had come to rest in front of a low bungalow that harmonized with its natural surroundings in a way that seemed unintentional but which Videl knew had to be the work of a master architect working closely with a master landscaper. There were other similar bungalows spaced widely along a winding walking path. Rin informed them that this one was to be theirs for the duration of their stay. A young man wearing a robe and sash in the same style and colors as Rin's was already waiting at the front door, and although the cart he was pushing was clearly meant for mounds of luggage, he didn't bat an eye at being asked to merely carry seven shopping bags inside.

Videl, who had spent most of her life as the daughter of one of the richest men in the world, was quickly growing incredulous at the level of wealth being displayed. Bulma, she thought, had been right to be suspicious.

The inside of the bungalow was spacious and comfortable, low chairs and cushions strewn about in an artfully chaotic manner. There were enough beds for each of them to have their own, although two of the rooms were clearly set up as honeymoon suites. There was also another small room near the entrance that Rin informed them was to be hers.

"I am on call day and night, so if there's anything you need at all don't hesitate to ask." She bowed low, and missed the looks of dismay her charges were giving each other. "My metabolism is such that I don't need much sleep, so while I know you mammals might feel hesitant about calling on me in the middle of the night, please do not worry. At most I might be drowsing, and for me being awoken is not the unpleasant inconvenience I know it is for you."

She bowed again, and upon being assured by Bulma that there was nothing else they needed, she retreated to her room, which was separated from the main suite by a short hallway. It was unlikely she would be able to hear anything that went on, but if any of them wanted to leave they would be walking right past her.

"Phew!" Bulma threw herself on a pillow the size of a small bed and sank so far down into it that she struggled to keep her head free. "That was awful! Who else has the heebie jeebies?"

"I know I do," Krillin said, folding his arms and beginning to pace. "Where are all the torture devices and oppressed citizens?"

Tien cleared his throat loudly, and when all their eyes were upon him he tapped his ear and then looked meaningfully around the room. Bulma stared blankly at him for a moment, and then nodded in understanding and struggled up from the pillow.

"This place might seem like a paradise," she said, popping open a luggage capsule and rummaging around in it. After a moment she emerged with a device that she waved around the room. "But let's see how paradisiacal it really is."

They held their collective breath as she walked from one side of the bungalow to the other. Once she made the complete round she looked down at the screen on her device and frowned deeply.

"Nothing," she said. "Somehow I find that more suspicious."

She rummaged around in her luggage again and took out another device, which she switched on and placed on the table.

"There. If we do have any eavesdroppers, electronic or otherwise, they can't hear a thing we say."

"Well, now what?" Krillin looked rapidly between Tien and Bulma. Tien was still frowning at the surroundings, but at Krillin's voice he turned the frown on him.

"We need more information," he said. "I don't believe for one second that the kind of tyrant who would mind control our friends is also the kind, prosperous leader Rin claims he is. Something rotten is hiding under the surface here, and I'll wager our friends are at the center of it."

"Our tour guide isn't going to take us to the places we need to find out that kind of information." Bulma crossed one arm over her stomach and propped her other elbow in her hand. "We need to ditch her somehow."

"We could sneak out one of the windows," Goten offered helpfully.

"No way, someone will see us." Trunks delivered his dismissal without even looking Goten's way. Videl tensed, but aside from a slight clenching of his jaw Goten did not react.

"We just need to get past the front path and then we'll blend right in." Bulma rummaged around in one of her shopping bags and pulled out the veil that went with her outfit. She drew it down over her face, obscuring her features well enough for casual observation. "So we need someone to distract her."

"Or better yet, get her out of the house entirely," Tien mused. Despite not covering his face, he wore the loose robes of Ophidian fashion so naturally he looked more believably to be a native than he had a Galactic patrolman.

"I'll do it," Goten said. All eyes turned to him. His jaw was set in a way Videl was pretty sure he didn't know was adorable. He met all their gazes with composure. "She and I were talking and I can just pretend I wanted to finish our conversation. I'll take her on a walk or something while you guys go and look for more clues."

Videl's heart clenched in a miniature version of the pang she felt when Pan learned a new word or mastered a new skill. As happened more and more these days, she was suddenly reminded that Goten was already fourteen. It felt too young for him to be that grown up, but she had already been doing ride-alongs with the police at fourteen.

"That's perfect, Goten!" Bulma said, flipping up the veil to give him a proud wink. "Flirting the enemy out of the way is part of the proud tradition of spy work."

Goten flushed, and glared at the floor, and didn't look anyone in the eye for the rest of the conversation.


	9. Chapter 9

_The clothes didn't fit right._

_She'd just bought them that morning, while getting herself out of the way for Krillin's party plans. They'd fit perfectly then. She'd vogued and posed in front of the mirror, pleased with what she saw. But now they didn't sit right on her body. They were tight where they shouldn't be tight, and loose where they shouldn't be loose._

_She tugged at them, frowning. It wasn't that she thought Krillin wouldn't find her attractive if her clothes didn't fit right. It was just… odd. Something was odd. Something had been odd all day..._

_Her mind went out of focus for a moment, and then cleared. It was the cheap fabric, she decided, looking back down at the outfit that definitely didn't fit the way it had this morning. It was so cheap her own body heat had pulled and warped it out of shape. She made a noise of disgust. The price had suggested better quality, but apparently she'd been duped._

_Oh, well. Now she had an excuse to go shopping again. But not at that store. Clothes so cheap they fit differently from one hour to the next? That was just…_

_Wrong._

* * *

It was easy to talk to Rin, and Goten wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. It simplified his job, at least: Rin _loved_ to talk. In fact, he was pretty sure he could keep her talking indefinitely, but the scary thing was a part of him _wanted_ to. Although this desert planet was nothing like his green, mountainous home, she spoke of it so lovingly that he soon found himself developing an affection for it. True, he had to steer the conversation to the natural world and away from the political landscape (he knew he should be gathering intel, but the worm of guilt in his stomach at listening to a bright, innocent girl speak kindly of a tyrant would not allow it), but soon he too knew the difference between an _ecno_ plant and a _fwel_ tree and could whistle the _brightner's_ song almost as well as she could.

And she was just as excited to hear about the flora and fauna of his own home. She hung on his every word with an enthusiasm he found infectious, and he found himself speaking not only of birds nests and dinosaur eggs, but his house, his mother (almost too late he remembered Videl was supposed to be his mother, and edited accordingly but as little as he could get away with), his studies and the food he ate. She wanted to hear it all, and he wanted to tell her.

But soon the sun began to set, and Rin, upon seeing several _gishnu_ lizards scurrying for their burrows, recollected herself, and informed him that they had better get back. Goten, who could just barely make out the energy signatures of the others, almost none of which were at the bungalow, tried to quickly think up an excuse to keep her talking.

"We don't need to go back just yet, do we?" he began, but she shook her head firmly.

"It's nearly dinner time. Don't you mammals need to eat more often than once a day?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

"And I completely forgot to explain the way dinner service works!" Rin's hands flew to her face. Goten couldn't help but chuckle.

"We already figured it out," he said. The electronic menu hadn't been hard to make sense of, and the pictures of the meals had been strange but tantalizing. In any other circumstance he would love to rush home for dinner. "And I'm sure everyone's going to want to eat in tonight."

"Still, I should really be at my post," Rin said, but there was a note of reluctance in her voice that Goten felt certain he could work with.

"Trust me, they're not going to want to go anywhere tonight," he said with authority. Rin looked at him strangely.

"But they just got here. You're sure they won't want to explore some more after dinner?"

Goten cursed himself. That did seem weird.

"Um," he said, and Rin twirled from where she was walking beside him to come to rest directly in front of him, blocking his path. She peered into his eyes, on level with her own large, amber colored ones, and frowned softly.

"Is there some reason you don't want to go back?" she said, and his blood turned to ice in his veins. He stared back at her, frozen, unable to think of even one thing to say. Eventually she leaned back a little and looked down at the braid that spilled over her shoulder, plucking at it with both hands. "I know it's none of my business," she began, "but I can tell there's some tension in your family. Both families. I've been told in my training that some families come on vacation when things are especially tense as a way to relax or grow closer. Is that the case with you?"

She finally looked up at him, and he realized that fiddling with her braid had not been feigned disinterest but hiding nerves. She seemed concerned that she might have offended him, and he breathed out a laughing sigh. It was the perfect out, both for this momentary slip up and any future ones — and there were certainly going to be future ones.

He remembered he was supposed to be suffering from familial turmoil, and turned around so she couldn't see his face.

"You're right," he said. "Things aren't going well with us right now. My dad is..." He stopped abruptly. He had been going on autopilot, ready to spin whatever tale of woe his brain spit up, but he realized that the words he had been about to say ("my dad is always gone") were not a lie. The thought unnerved him, and he scrambled desperately for something to say, but Rin took his sudden silence as reluctance.

"It's okay." He turned and found that the hands on her braid had stilled. Her eyes were soft with concern, and her copper scales shone silver in the rising moonlight. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But if you really think they won't miss me, I would be happy to listen if you do want to talk."

It was exactly what he had come out here to do. But the thought of spinning his real troubles into half-truths in order to deceive someone who was trying to be kind to him made him sick to his stomach. Again, she took his downcast eyes for recalcitrance, and she nodded.

"We don't have to talk," she said lightly. "But I want to show you something."

She took his hand, her scales smooth and warm, and led him down the main path out of the compound. She didn't seem to be taking him off the resort grounds, but they were getting further and further away from the bungalows, and after a few minutes of walking he asked,

"Where are we going?"

She turned from where she was in front of him and gave him a wink. Seeing it made something lurch in his chest, and he allowed her to lead him without asking any more questions.

Soon they came to their destination, a fenced off area full of large cages. Huddled in the corners of the enclosures Goten could see animal shapes, mostly sleeping, some grooming themselves or pacing. She turned to him again, eager to see his reaction.

"I was going to suggest coming here tomorrow," she said. "But I thought you could use some cheering up."

"It's a zoo?"

Rin nodded. In general Goten didn't hold with zoos. He preferred to get to know animals in their natural habitats, but the opportunity to see alien animals was too exciting to pass up.

"Can we go inside?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"It's closed. But we can see some of them from outside."

Goten eyed the outer fence, a mere ten feet tall. A simple matter to jump over, assuming she would allow him. Assuming it wouldn't blow their cover. He was an alien, Goten eventually decided. He could have superpowers if he wanted to.

"Let's go inside," he suggested, pulling her closer. She looked up at him strangely, and he grinned. "Do you trust me?" She studied his eyes with mild suspicion, but eventually gave one slow reluctant nod. Before she could change her mind he scooped her up in a bridal carry and leaped easily over the fence. She gave a deep gasp but did not scream, and once they were safely on the ground he gently put her on her feet. Despite being firmly back on the ground one of her hands still gripped his shoulder, and she looked up at him in amazement.

"How did you do that?"

Goten shrugged. "The gravity on our planet is different. I can go even higher than that if I wanted to."

She looked like she wanted to take him up on it. At the end of the broad lane that cut through the center of the zoo was a large building, with an even taller spire at the top. He pointed his chin at it.

"Want to see the view from up there?"

"Okay!" Rin began to run towards the building, her hand trailing down his shoulder. When it reached his own hand he grasped it, pulling her back gently. When she turned to him in confusion he grinned.

"I can jump there from here," he informed her. Her incredulity was invitation enough for him, and he scooped her up once again before leaping even higher into the air. This time she did scream a little, and immediately clapped her hands over her mouth, giggling. He landed on the top of the spire, balancing on one foot, and they both held their breath as they waited to see if they would be discovered. After a few minutes it seemed like no one had heard, and they both laughed in relief.

The entire city lay glittering before them, the soft glow of electric lights and the flickering of torches mirrored by the flecks of starlight above. The royal palace sat in the center, its lights reflecting on the river that ran directly underneath it. It was strange to think that the person who had kidnapped his brother and father was living in a building so delicate and beautiful.

"I've never seen it like this," Rin said in a hushed voice, her thoughts untroubled by reflections on evil. "Have you ever seen a city like this?"

"Sort of," he said, also speaking in a whisper. "The city where Trunks lives is a lot bigger and brighter, so you can't see the stars as well."

"What do you mean?"

"What?"

They looked at each other in confusion. Rin tried to clarify.

"What do the city lights have to do with seeing the stars?" she asked. Goten blinked, and then realized that she had lived her entire life in the city. There was nothing outside, no reason for her to leave it, so she might not know about light pollution. The thought that she had never seen the stars in their proper brightness made him sad.

"The lights from the city drown out the stars and make it harder to see them. Out in the desert I bet they would be even brighter. At my house, on clear nights, the stars are so bright you can see by them, and when the moon is full it almost looks like daylight."

She was looking at him in wonder, and he felt that not unpleasant lurch in his chest again as he met her eyes.

"Want to see them?" he whispered. The shining wonder on her face grew even brighter, and the warmth in his chest grew even deeper when she nodded.

* * *

To Videl it seemed like a celebration was going on, but the longer she wandered through the night market the more she got the sense that this was simply business as usual. Loud, raucous music perfect for dancing, laughter and drinking on every corner, strangers taking her hands and dancing a few rounds with her before releasing her with elaborate well-wishes: in none of it was there the manic rush to squeeze in as much enjoyment as possible that was typical of a holiday. Next she figured it was simply characteristic of the tourist district, but the further she wandered from that part of town the more she questioned that assumption.

True, the residential quarter was more sedate, but there was still music, still the occasional dancer, still plenty of people out chatting and laughing as though life were simply too good to want to spend any of it sleeping. She got more attention there, but it was still of the friendly variety. An old man stood and bowed deeply to her as she passed by his dwelling, and when she bowed in return he grinned widely and gave her a kiss on her cheek. Children ran up to her, wanting to touch her smooth, non-scaly skin, and the scolding their parents gave them was lighthearted, as much joying in the innocence of children as teaching good manners.

Tien, Krillin, and Trunks had all taken the further parts of the city, being able to travel quickly without attracting notice, so Videl was not expecting to find much within walking distance of the tourist district. Still, she thought it worth her while to investigate when she heard the name Zema being toasted in an open-air tavern.

Moving closer she found a loose ring of people around two others sitting across from each other at a small, low table. One was celebrating while the other looked defeated, but Videl hadn't heard enough to tell what kind of contest had just been decided.

"Any other takers?" the victor was shouting, waving a tankard in the air. There was a commotion Videl couldn't see, deeper into the open-walled overhang that comprised the tavern. She stood on tiptoes and craned her neck, and the enormous man she was standing next to noticed, smiled graciously, and with one hand lifted her onto his shoulder. Videl froze, but after a few seconds it seemed as though he really had nothing else in mind than allowing her to see better.

The commotion was caused by a thin young man being cajoled and teased by his fellows into challenging the victor. He was hanging back, seeming embarrassed, but his friends were determined to make him participate, and after the victor asked the crowd what they wanted and the overwhelming (in numbers and in volume) response was in favor of the young man, he took a large gulp of his ale and acquiesced.

He sat down on the stool across from the other man, who grinned and gestured for him to go first. There was no gameboard on the table between them, just their tankards, but it was also no higher than their knees, unsuitable for arm wrestling. The newcomer thought deeply for a moment and then smiled slyly.

"I am a Mountain Class destroyer, sixteen hyper guns, two thousand troops, armor thick and shields powerful."

Over the surprised and delighted roar of the crowd Videl almost failed to hear her benefactor muttering to himself.

"An unusual opening. But he'll soon find starting big isn't always better."

The previous champion was smiling and nodding, and when the crowd's noise died down sufficiently he responded.

"I am a planetary defense system, shield punching, troops innumerable, small fighters that slip through shields and target weak points."

"I am an army," the young man shot back almost immediately, "I bring thousands of destroyers to bear, and my own battalion of fighters, swarming and confusing, overwhelming."

The crowd murmured, most apparently wondering how the champion would respond, but the man on whose shoulder Videl was perched remained confident.

"That young 'un still thinks this game is about brute force. Sad, really. But it will be a good lesson for him."

"I am a traitor," the champion said with quiet assurance. The crowd hushed. "I sell secrets to the enemy, I reveal troop positions and future plans, I allow for the perfect ambush that brings all advantages to nothing."

The young man grew flustered, and the crowd murmured, eager to see how he would respond. The champion leaned back and took a long sip of ale, never breaking eye contact with his opponent. After nearly a minute the challenger, with far less confidence but just as much determination, gave his answer.

"I am guilt." Videl heard the man next to her grunt in surprise, and someone in the crowd gasped audibly, causing the rest of them to laugh. The young man smiled, and went on with shaky assurance. "I am hopelessness, driving the traitor to take his own life."

The victor tipped his tankard to his opponent with a look of deep respect, but he did not need any time to think before he countered.

"I am forgiveness. I see the guilty conscience and I know peace is better than war, understanding better than hatred, unity better than conflict. I ease all hurts and wipe away all tears."

Try as he might, though his opponent gave him ample time and the crowd encouraged him to try to counter, the young man could not, and eventually threw up his hands in defeat. The crowd cheered and both opponents shook hands, the winner saying something encouraging to the loser before he returned to stand with his friends, who teased him good-naturedly.

The man holding Videl turned to her, arching an eyebrow.

"What did you think?"

Videl indicated she would like to be set down, and he did so.

"What is that game called?" she said. The man shrugged.

"It doesn't really have a name that I know of," he said. "Some call it the oldest game. Mostly we know it as Lord Zema's favorite game."

There was something in his tone that made it clear this was explanation enough, and Videl gave him a polite smile and moved on before the sudden buzzing in her head could resolve itself into either rage or tears.

* * *

Despite her best hopes, no one else had found anything of substance either. Trunks came in with a red fruit in his hands, staring at it in a subdued manner uncharacteristic of him. All he would say when they asked was that it was cultivated by slave labor, as were apparently most of the goods available here. This surprised none of them and sobered all of them.

When informed that Goten was still out distracting the enemy, Trunks flopped down on a low armchair and crossed his arms over his chest, staring into space. Neither he, nor Tien nor Krillin nor Chiaotzu, had sensed even the slightest glimmer of energy from any of the six missing people.

"I mean, they _could_ be somewhere else by now," Bulma was saying. "But they were definitely here, and I think we should do some more poking around before we go running back to Zuno. It's possible they're just suppressing their energy, right?" She turned to Tien, and he hesitated before nodding.

"It's unlikely, but it is possible," he said. "More likely is that they've already moved on, but I think you're right about staying. If we can somehow find out where Zema sent them we might be able to follow them."

"That sounds like even more spy work," Videl said, her voice an even mixture of resignation and determination. "How are we supposed to find out about an Emperor's future plans?"

"Oh, I've got a few ideas," Bulma began, but the front door to the bungalow opened, and they all turned, listening intently to the two indistinct voices speaking in the hall. It was Rin and Goten, and as they listened, Goten said something and Rin laughed, a flirtatious giggle that had Trunks folding in on himself even tighter in his armchair. After a few more murmured exchanges they heard a door click shut in the hallway. The door to their suite opened to reveal Goten looking flustered and trying to hide it.

"Did you guys find anything?" he asked them once the door was shut behind him. Bulma opened her mouth but Trunks beat her to it.

"Did _you_?" At Goten's confusion Trunks sat up in the armchair, sitting on the very edge. "Or did you spend your whole time flirting?"

Goten flushed a deep red and kept silent, as good as a yes. Trunks made a disgusted noise and got up, leaving the living room and shutting the door to his private room firmly behind him. Bulma shook her head almost fondly.

"Don't worry about it, Goten," she said. "She wouldn't have known anything anyway. And it's not like we found much either."

Goten nodded, but no one missed the way, for the rest of the night, his eyes kept flicking towards the door to Trunks' room.


	10. Chapter 10

_The air stank of antiseptic. The smell was so cloying he held a gloved hand up to his nose to block it out, but somehow that only made the smell stronger. Lowering his hand again, he wondered how long he had been here. Certainly many hours, perhaps even days. He had lost track somewhere along the way. Not that it mattered. He would be here as long as it took._

_Even though fatigue hung from his limbs like weights he resisted the urge to sleep. Losing consciousness at this point was unacceptable, but, the longer he stood vigil, the more unavoidable it also became. The thought of being asleep when the man came back made his stomach feel sick again, and he stood and paced, ranging up and down the space like a caged animal._

_Others, also waiting, flicked their tired eyes up to his, and then back down to their laps. Some were hopeless, some jittery with nerves. All had their own demons to wrestle with, and could spare no attention to watch him wrestle with his._

* * *

The first thing Tien noticed on their second drive through the city was that the streets were suspiciously clean.

West City was almost this clean, especially right around Capsule Corp., but that was due mostly to the Briefs regularly releasing an army of garbage robots that took care of the litter and swept up the debris. The East Capital, especially downtown, was grimy and dirty, a combination of careless citizens and natural dirt and organic debris.

But here there were no scurrying robots picking up garbage and scrubbing sidewalks, nor did he, once he thought to look for it, see any people performing a similar job. No one littered, no one smoked. No one even shouted angrily at jaywalkers or argued with their significant other. Everywhere he looked people were smiling, laughing, or just peacefully enjoying the sunshine. At first he assumed it could all be blamed on this being the tourist part of town, but a whispered conversation with Videl informed him that the rest of the city was like this too.

It made his skin crawl.

They reached the palace, all high towers and bas relief sculptures in white marble that had to be imported to this red and brown colored land. It was a beautiful building, and Rin was a top-notch tour guide, tailoring her comments to (what she thought were) her clients' interests. Bulma had explained their desire to see the palace by claiming an interest in architecture, and Tien learned more about balustrades and buttresses in half an hour than he had learned in his whole life.

Of far more importance, though, was the map she gave them at the beginning, which marked the areas off-limits to tourists in thin red stripes. They were even labeled, although some of the labels were less helpful than others. "Administration" could mean anything. Still, before the tour was half over Bulma had marked the most likely places to find information on her map: all of them interior rooms, as well as the entire basement. Getting to them unnoticed would not prove nearly so easy.

Unlike in other parts of the city, they stuck out more noticeably as tourists here. Their flowing robes and veils were utterly unlike the stiff business linen worn by members of the palace staff. There were also guards everywhere, and although they looked ornamental in their tall headdresses and ornate coats, Tien could tell they were the real deal. They might not be a threat to his life, but they would notice aberrant behavior far sooner than civilians would.

It soon became clear that the tour was angling up, with the grand finale to take place in the throne room. Not only did they want to avoid the possibility of an early confrontation with Zema himself, but the basement seemed like the best place to start looking. Bulma kept giving Tien significant looks, but he had no idea how to redirect the tour or break off from it in a natural way. Krillin had already tried asking to use the bathroom, but Rin had merely diverted the entire tour group to the facilities, which, Tien had to admit, were very nice.

At the third flight of (large, sweeping, ornate) stairs Trunks let out a loud groan and stopped in his tracks. The entire tour group as well as several passing staff members turned to look at him. He crossed his arms over his chest and threw his head back at an impatient angle.

"Mom, don't you think we've had enough architecture for one day?"

His tone was disrespectful and mocking, and Tien immediately understood what he was up to. He stepped forward, also folding his arms.

"Young man, you will speak to your mother with more respect."

Trunks curled his lip and gave him a sullen glare.

"Don't act like you're having fun, _dad_. You didn't even want to come on this trip either."

"Regardless, we are here now, and you are being very rude. Now apologize."

"Why should I? I'm not even —"

As they argued, Tien glanced at Rin from the corner of his eye, and found her studying them intently. Goten had told them she thought they were there because of some kind of family trouble, and this was only confirming it in her eyes. After a few more rounds of pointless bickering, Trunks clenched his fists.

"You know what, screw all this. Screw _you_."

He turned on his heel and walked back the way they had come. Rin looked suddenly alarmed, and took a step forward, but before she could make any progress Bulma stepped in her way, jabbing a finger in Tien's face.

"That's your own fault for antagonizing him," she said. "Go after him and talk some sense into him, and don't come back until you two can get along."

Tien turned on his heel sharply as though in anger, and walked quickly after Trunks. He caught up to him in a moment, and they walked shoulder to shoulder, both keeping an ear out for any signs of someone following them. After a few moments they both decided no pursuit was forthcoming, and stopped in a small hallway across from the restrooms. Trunks glanced up at Tien through the corner of his eye, and a silly grin spread over his face involuntarily. He started chuckling, and Tien answered it with a small smile. Trunks kept laughing long after anything could be said to be funny, and he eventually started coughing and held a hand over his face, glancing up at Tien from time to time as he composed himself. It took Tien a full minute to realize he was embarrassed, and then he looked away too.

"You did a good job back there," he said to the drinking fountain on the opposite wall. He risked glancing down at Trunks, who now looked even more embarrassed.

"Thanks," Trunks mumbled. They stood in awkward silence for a moment, and then began walking. "I think I did that all right. I would never dare talk to my dad like that."

"You're not afraid of him, are you?" Tien asked as delicately as he could. Trunks faltered in his steps and looked at him full in the face: he was utterly confused.

"No, of course not."

"I know he can be a bit harsh sometimes," Tien explained. Trunks shrugged.

"Yeah, but that's just how he is. I know he hates being disrespected more than anything, so I..." He shrugged again. "Try not to."

If Tien had been pressed to describe Trunks' relationship with his father, an unspoken understanding would've been the last thing he'd have guessed. He wondered briefly if they would attract too much attention as tourists obviously missing a guide, but no one stopped them. They were in the main entrance hall now, which was packed with beings coming and going, some of them fellow tourists, most of them employees. Though Trunks was quite a bit taller than he'd been scant months before, Tien still had him by at least a foot, and that was why he saw Vegeta first.

Dressed in a blue military uniform similar to the few soldiers they had seen, Vegeta was walking sedately from one end of the hall to the other, politely moving aside when someone was in his way. His gait was wrong, and his face was a stranger's: it seemed Zema manipulated his victims not by forcing their will but by controlling them directly, like puppets. Tien felt bile rise in his throat.

Swiftly, before Trunks caught sight of his father, Tien grabbed him by the arm and spun him around, pulling him behind a pillar out of sight. For a split second Trunks gaped up at him in confusion, and then he caught the feeling of his father's ki (it was faint and strange but still unmistakably his) and his face fell stricken. Almost faster than Tien could react to Trunks pulled one of Bulma's headbands out of his pocket and shifted his weight to step out from behind the pillar. It took reflexes augmented by more ki than Tien was comfortable using when he was trying to remain undetected to stop him. Trunks glared up at him, tears already forming in his eyes.

"Now's our chance!" he hissed, pulling at Tien's grip.

"We can't tip our hand yet," Tien hissed back in Trunks' ear. "If we get caught now we lose everything."

"I can do it! I'm fast enough, you know I am." Trunks' voice held a note of pleading behind the gritted teeth.

"Yes, and then what?" Tien said sternly, cruelly. "We have Vegeta and we've lost all the others. _If_ we have Vegeta at all. The second that headband goes on Zema knows what we're capable of. The element of surprise is all we have, and he's so powerful it may be all we _ever_ have, do you understand?"

Trunks was grinding his teeth, shaking under Tien's grip, staring at the floor unseeing. He was tracking his father's energy, which was moving further and further away, and trying desperately to suppress his own.

"But he's right there," he whispered, pain lifting his voice into a whine. He knew Tien was right, that was obvious, but he was also this close to losing it in an explosive manner. Tien faced him squarely and put both hands on his shoulders, squeezing gently. He wasn't a teacher for nothing.

"Breathe," he whispered, forcing his own breath into a gentle in-and-out for Trunks to mimic. Eventually he did so, and when he had followed the pattern for four or five breaths, Tien continued. "We will rescue him, I promise. We won't leave him behind."

They stood like that for a few long moments, Tien breathing steadily, Trunks trying to do likewise. Eventually Vegeta passed up a set of stairs and through a doorway, which closed behind him with a low but carrying click. Trunks' whole body shivered and his head sank down to rest on his chest. The quivering of his shoulders was the only evidence of the tears he was suppressing. Tien wanted to tell him he was proud of him, but he feared to undo Trunks' efforts at controlling himself. Eventually the moment passed and the boy lifted his head, eyes hard and narrow, but dry.

"You ready?" Tien asked. Trunks dipped his chin once, sharply.

"Let's go."

* * *

"He was just walking around like he belonged there. No one was paying any attention to him," Tien was saying. They had cut the tour short and were back at the hotel. Their excuse had been Chiaotzu's growing headache, which unfortunately had not been a lie. He was lying on one of the couches with an ice pack on his head, trying to stay present. Tien was obviously agitated, but it wasn't clear what was affecting him more: Chiaotzu's condition or seeing Vegeta.

Goten had already tried catching Trunks' eye, but he was studiously avoiding everyone except his mother. He had perched himself on the arm of the chair she was sitting in, towering over her like a mother hawk. It would've been funny except for how it wasn't.

"So they _are_ still here," Bulma said.

" _Vegeta's_ still here," Krillin corrected swiftly. "We don't know for sure if the others are or not."

"They probably are." Bulma waved a hand dismissively. "And even if not, we know we're on the right track."

"But how are we supposed to find them?" Videl asked. "If we go wandering around the palace again they might see us."

"We've got to use the dragon balls," Trunks said suddenly. "We can wish for them to be out from under his control, or if that's not possible, wish for the headbands to be put on them."

Everyone could see Bulma suddenly grimace.

"Yeah, that's not going to work," she said. "I didn't want to worry anyone, but they're listening in on all communications. If I try to call home they'll hear us for sure. We're on our own."

After hours of discussion they decided all they could do was more recon, and that meant Goten was on Rin duty again.

"Don't stay out too late," Bulma said with a wink as Goten left the bungalow. He ignored her, but harder to ignore was the look Trunks gave him as he shut the door: disapproving and angry and something else.

Rin was glad to see him, and she asked no questions as they left the bungalow and headed toward the entertainment district. Goten played carnival games and skipped rocks over artificial ponds with an angry intensity he could tell Rin was politely not commenting on. Eventually they settled on a bench overlooking an open square full of street performers, eating fried tarantula on a stick. Rin had insisted it was delicious, and Goten was finding that she was mostly right.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," she said casually, looking out at an acrobat doing flips and handstands. "But I think you might feel better if you do."

She was probably right. But Goten wasn't sure what he was so angry about in the first place. Trunks being stubborn was nothing new. Sure, they had never had a fight that lasted this long before, but something had begun to occur to him: Trunks wasn't acting like he didn't care about Goten anymore, he was acting like he was mad at him. And while Goten had no idea what he might have done to make Trunks mad, it meant there was hope. It was about the only thing he had to hope for at the moment.

"I don't know how." He didn't know how to transmute what was happening into some lie that would be safe for Rin to hear. He didn't know how to talk about his anger if he didn't know why he was angry in the first place.

"Start with what happened with that other boy today." Rin clearly thought she was changing the subject to something less closely connected with Goten's own troubles, and Goten stuffed the last of the fried tarantula in his mouth, stood up, and swallowed.

"I can do better flips than that guy," he bragged, gesturing at the acrobat across the square and then immediately doing so, flipping backwards and landing with his feet in the exact spot they had been. Rin was too delighted to call him on his obvious subject change, and she clapped, so he did more tricks, each more impressive than the last, and after a while he attracted a crowd of his own. The cheers ignited something in him, the delight in their faces making him feel powerful; he couldn't free his family or even figure out what to do, but at least he could make people smile. High on adulation and accomplishment, he attempted a move he had only seen in cartoon shows and had been longing to try.

Halfway through the complicated maneuver was a somersault, and he executed it perfectly except for the fact that his hat came off. He quickly scooped it up and placed it back on his head, and no one in the crowd seemed to notice or care. Bulma and the others had admitted they were probably being overly paranoid, but Goten glanced back at Rin to check anyway.

She was staring at him in shock.

He froze. What had she seen? Had she recognized him, or was it something else? He turned back to face the crowd, but nothing there seemed unusual. He bowed with an unsteady flourish, and they applauded and broke up, each going their separate ways. Heart thundering in his chest he turned back around to face Rin, who now looked thoughtful in a way that made him shiver even in the desert heat. Without taking her eyes off his face she walked forward and studied him. She seemed like she was looking for something, and Goten knew he should run away, fly back to the hotel room and tell everyone their cover was blown, help them all rush back to the ship and get off the planet.

But he was rooted to the spot, and he found he couldn't move even when she reached into her pocket and pulled out her information device. Was it a communicator also? He couldn't remember. She was scrolling through something, and he took a step back, tensing to fly away, when she turned, showing him the screen. In spite of himself he paused, unable to do anything but look.

It was a picture of his father.

The expression was all wrong (blank and solemn and dignified) and the clothes were nothing his dad would ever wear (military and ornate and stifling) but it was unmistakably him, including the untamable hair that defied all haircuts and styling products: hair Goten had inherited.

He looked up at Rin again, confused and unable even to frame the question. She was still searching his face for something, but after a moment she spoke.

"He's related to you, isn't he?"

Something finally unstuck in Goten's throat. "Where did you get that picture?"

Rin glanced back down at the screen and scrolled up, inviting him to look. Above Goku's picture was a block of text addressed to members of the tourism board. The following individuals had been recruited for the army by Lord Zema himself, and a parade was to be held in their honor.

"Who are the others?" Goten asked. Wordlessly Rin scrolled down, and sure enough, wearing identical outfits and almost identical expressions, were the five others they were looking for: Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Android Seventeen and Android Eighteen. Rin looked up at him, silently questioning. He looked back at her, unable to think of a single thing to say.

"Is he related to you?" she asked again. He briefly considered lying, but not only would that be obviously false, he was also beginning to think she did not suspect him. Was it possible she was just confused at the resemblance?

"Yes. He's — he's my father."

Her brow wrinkled in confusion. "I thought Krillin was your father."

"He's my stepfather." The lie rolled off his tongue easily, so easily he didn't know whether to be proud or afraid. Rin accepted it without a second thought, nodding as she looked back down at the photo like she had just solved a mystery.

"Well," she said brightly, looking back up at him. "You'll be able to see him if you want to. The parade is tomorrow."

* * *

The lie they came up with was this: Goku was an undercover Galactic Patrol agent, on a very dangerous and, above all, _top-secret_ mission. Yes, the government was aware of their presence, but they certainly would not have told a mere tour guide about the true nature of her clients, not when keeping a low profile was so important to the mission. No, Goten hadn't been aware of this either. (In the hotel room, Rin had taken hold of Goten's hand as Tien said this, as though he needed moral support. The fact that he did only made him feel worse.) If Goten wanted to go to the parade to see his father, Tien would allow it, but only if they went in disguise. Goku must not be given even one moment's distraction.

The soap opera levels of drama implied by Krillin being both Goku's coworker and husband to his ex-wife were left unstated, but no one missed the searching looks Rin gave Videl. Krillin looked like he wanted to laugh hysterically, but Goten only felt sick to his stomach.

When Tien asked Rin to give them all some privacy, she agreed immediately, shooting Goten a lingering look of sympathy as she closed the door. Everyone held their breath until they heard the distant click of the door to Rin's private quarters, and then Krillin gave a noisy sigh and drooped over the back of the nearest chair.

"That was nerve-racking! I'm glad you can think on your feet so well, Tien."

"Yes, well, we're still not out of trouble yet," Tien said, folding his arms over his chest. A few days ago Goten would have confidently identified the expression on his face as sternness, but after having spent so much time with him he realized Tien was worried. "If she tells anyone..."

"She won't." Goten ignored Trunks' snort of disbelief.

"But this is great," Videl said, eyes sparkling. "We know for certain they're all here. We know exactly where they're going to be. We have a real chance now!"

"Hold your horses, Videl." Tien seemed sorry to be speaking, but he continued anyway. "There's a big problem. The second even one of those headbands goes on the game is up, and if we don't have every single one of them out of Zema's control, we will probably have lost our only chance to get them back."

"Then all we have to do is get them on at the same time," Trunks argued, standing next to Videl. "That's not impossible."

"It's not our speed that's in question, Trunks," Krillin said grimly, looking at Tien as though he understood him perfectly. "It's our numbers."

"But there's six of them, and..." Trunks trailed off as his eyes roved around the group, and Goten came to the same conclusion at the same time.

"There's not enough of us," he said glumly.

"What are you guys talking about?" Videl said, eyes snapping. "We have me, Tien, Krillin, Goten, Trunks, and Chiaotzu. Six for six."

"I don't think I can do it," Chiaotzu said weakly from where he was lying on one of the cushions with an ice pack on his head. "Even if I was feeling well, I'm not even close to the same league as those guys."

"But we'll be taking them by surprise," Videl argued. "We don't need to be faster than them, not if they don't see us coming."

"I disagree," Tien said. "We don't know how spread out they will be. It might not even be possible to take all of them by surprise. Besides, if even one of us is too slow and catches their attention we have to assume they will all be able to react in time, and then we have none of them."

He was looking at Videl, and Videl was looking at him. She seemed angry about something, angrier than Goten had ever seen her, and Tien seemed to know exactly what.

"I'm fast enough." Videl glared at Tien, and unbeknownst to her, her fists began to clench. "I may not be in the same league as you guys, but I'm fast enough for this."

"I respect your willingness, and I certainly respect all the hard work you've put in to your training. But I don't think you are."

For a brief instant Videl looked almost ready to leap at Tien from where she stood across the room. But she composed herself. Before things could get even more heated, Goten broke in.

"It's okay, Videl," he said, putting a hand on her arm. "Trunks and I are fast enough that we can each take two."

"You're not," Tien said, earning him a glare from Goten as well. "Not when they're at full power. But I don't think we have a choice but to allow you to try."

"There's another wrinkle." Bulma's voice carried across the room from where she was sitting at her traveling lab, and she didn't look up from soldering components together. "If we can't do all six at once, that means we have to prioritize."

There was silence as all of them digested her full meaning. Tien was the first to speak.

"If we're looking at it tactically, we have to take out the strongest ones first. That means Goku and Vegeta, obviously."

"And don't tell him I said so, but I think we have to put Piccolo at the bottom of the list," Krillin said with an uneasy grin.

Videl was studying the carpet pensively, but she nodded. "He would understand."

"That leaves Gohan and the androids," Tien said.

"Gohan makes the list, of course," Videl said thoughtfully, looking sideways at Krillin. She opened her mouth to say more, but Tien shook his head.

"No, I think it has to be both androids."

Videl snapped her eyes up to his, looking, if anything, even angrier than she had before.

"I beg your pardon?" Her voice was cold, but Tien continued unperturbed.

"If it comes down to it, we can count on the ones we've freed to fight anyone we miss. Gohan may be powerful, but he does have his limits. The androids, on the other hand, have infinite energy, and I don't want to play keep away with someone who doesn't get tired."

Try as she might, and it was clear she was trying, Videl could think of no counter for that. Eventually her fists, which had clenched again, relaxed, and she bowed her head in defeat.

"I'm sorry," Tien said, and he really was. "This is a heartbreaking decision no matter who we leave out."

"Not that anyone asked," Bulma drawled again, "but I do have an alternate plan."

"We're all ears," Tien said gratefully. Bulma pushed up the goggles she was wearing so they sat perched on her head, pushing her hair up in crazy angles. The circles under her eyes were even deeper now, and Goten suddenly realized he didn't remember Bulma going to bed last night.

"Strictly speaking, we don't need six headbands. We only need one."

"You mean Zema," Tien said, and shook his head. "No. We have no way to take him by surprise, and the second he feels like he's in danger he's going to call our friends to him. We're going to have to face them either way."

"Then we do both." Bulma shrugged. Tien shook his head again.

"We can't divide our forces like that. It's got to be one or the other."

Bulma smiled. "Who said anything about dividing our forces?"

"Oh, no, no, no," Krillin said, getting up and approaching Bulma's worktable. "I know where you're going with this, Bulma, and there's no way it's a good idea."

"What, you mean—?" Trunks looked rapidly between Krillin and Bulma. "You mean mom wants to go in there alone?"

Bulma's smile deepened. Several voices, including Goten's own, immediately rose in a cacophony of outrage, but after a moment Bulma gritted her teeth and slammed her fists down on the table so hard all the components jumped into the air. She fixed them with a stare that was determined, livid, and more than a little crazed.

"Do none of you understand? The reason any of this happened in the first place is because that bastard took over my mind and used me to lure our friends into danger. _Me_. Remember? Apparently I called them and convinced them to come over to my house. That means he used my voice, my relationship with them, their _trust_ in me, to get them to come. That's why they're here. Because he _used_ me. And I will not — I _cannot_ let that stand. This is not about tactics. Not for me. This is about revenge, pure and simple, and I am not going to rest until I have personally made him _suffer_."

There was a stunned silence. Bulma brushed a bit of imaginary dust off her worktable.

"And I'm not going alone. Videl's coming with me."


	11. Chapter 11

Rin's tourist pass made it easy to choose a good position: halfway along the road next to a large open park. The parade route rounded the corner of the park, so they would have plenty of time to watch each float before it made its way to them and adjust their plan accordingly, if need be. Krillin had made something up about the spot being aesthetically pleasing, so despite the fact that there were already people there, all Rin had to do was flash her badge, smile apologetically, and suddenly the space was theirs. Then all that was left to do was wait.

That proved to be more difficult than Goten had thought. At least he could show his nerves. In the story of their lie Trunks had no reason to be antsy, and he was only hiding it well enough to fool someone who didn't know him. To Goten his tells were as loud as shouts.

Only Krillin and Tien had come with them, the excuse being that Chiaotzu was worsening and needed extra care. Distressingly, that part was not a lie, but the look Rin gave Videl made it clear she knew it was mostly an excuse. Rin's connections had also allowed her to find out where in the parade line the 'volunteers' were positioned, so they knew at about what time Bulma should call Rin with an urgent problem only she could deal with. Rin would go back to the hotel room only to find it empty, Bulma and Videl long gone on their way to break into the palace, and Chiaotzu waiting in the ship, ready to act as getaway. If all went well, by the time Rin made it back to the parade route everything would be over, with her out of harm's way and none the wiser.

No one talked about how big an 'if' that was.

After three excruciating hours watching acrobatic shows, marching bands, and various government leaders wave from the back of ornate vehicles, it was finally time for Rin to leave. Tien passed on a 'message' from Bulma, and after a painful back-and-forth during which they tried their best to assure Rin they would be fine without making it clear they wanted her to leave, she finally did, giving Goten a lingering last glance. He smiled weakly, dropping it as soon as her head turned.

The floats going by now were more military in nature, interspersed with rows of soldiers and palace guards in ornate uniforms, and to Goten it felt like every float that came around the corner that didn't have his dad in it was a tiny blow to the inside of his stomach. When the volunteers' float finally did emerge, the sight of it was one huge gut punch that nearly made Goten double over.

All six of them were sitting in the back of an open air vehicle, wearing blue military uniforms with high collars and white gloves. All six of them were waving, happy smiles pasted on their faces. All six of them looked nauseatingly, horribly _wrong_.

To Goten, it was as though somebody had taken everything that made his father himself and scooped it out, leaving someone else: the bright, goofy grin had been replaced by a small, neutral smile; his big, enthusiastic wave was now subdued and dignified; his hair had been slicked down and he was sitting with his knees together, not fidgeting. The only familiar thing left was his energy, and even that felt strange, like looking at handwriting written with someone's non-dominant hand: still them, but completely different.

Goten sucked in a breath through his nostrils, grateful Rin wasn't here. He knew he was about to get violent.

Trunks was twitching, and Krillin was growling under his breath. All of them — Seventeen and Eighteen, Gohan and Piccolo, and especially Vegeta — looked as wrong as Goku.

"Breathe," Tien said, mostly to Trunks, but Goten was grateful for the reminder. "Trunks, remember, once you have Vegeta go for Piccolo. Goten, go for Gohan. We'll wait until they're almost right on top of us. Keep your heads down until then."

That was going to be another two or three minutes, but it may as well have been two or three eternities. It was all Goten could do to focus on breathing. His fists had clenched unconsciously, and the only other thing his brain could find room to think about (other than 'dad's right there _he's right there'_ ) was that he really liked the outfit he was wearing and he hoped it didn't get ripped. It was a stupid thing to think. He would gladly let it disintegrate into vapor if it meant getting his dad back.

Somehow the float went immediately from being too far away to being almost on top of them. Tien sent a series of beeps through his walkie-talkie to signal to Bulma they were about to act. A few seconds went by, and then a huge explosion rocked the palace, visible even from this distance. Every head in the crowd turned toward the noise; every head except theirs; every head including their six friends.

The four of them used that moment of distraction to make their move. They each leaped into the air, moving as fast as they could, which meant Trunks and Goten got to their targets before Krillin and Tien got to theirs. But it didn't matter. They had successfully taken Zema by surprise, and by the time Goten crossed the gulf between him and his dad, Goku had barely started to turn his head to look away from the explosion. There was a shivery moment of eye contact where someone who was not his father looked out of Goku's eyes, and then the silver circlet was on his head and those eyes went distant.

Goten did not wait to check his success. He still had Gohan to save, and he dove his hand into his shirt and pulled out the extra headband with every ounce of speed he had. Gohan was sitting behind Goku, and Goten was a hand's breadth from putting it over his head when Gohan reared back, eyes wide. In a last-ditch effort to get his brother back, Goten flung the circlet like a frisbee, hoping to hook it over his brother's head like a carnival game.

The circlet flew. Gohan's eyes narrowed. He slashed his hand in front of him like a knife, and the circlet shattered into a thousand tiny, useless pieces.

Goten leaped back. His eyes were still locked with Gohan's, though his brother was looking at him so murderously he didn't look like Gohan at all. Out of the corner of his eye Goten caught a glimpse of his dad, but then Gohan shot up high into the air above the car, gaining distance. Goten was about to rocket after him— to do what he didn't know— but then what he had seen in the split second glance at his dad penetrated and he looked down into the car. The six 'volunteers' had been riding in an open convertible, and as Goten looked down past his feet he saw Goku, Vegeta, Seventeen and Eighteen all slumped over motionless right where they had been sitting.

They had collapsed the second the headbands were in place.

"Dad!" Trunks cried, landing next to Vegeta and gathering him up, shaking him. "Dad, wake up!"

"What happened?" Goten demanded. "What did we do to them?"

"It doesn't matter!" Tien shouted, hoisting Seventeen's limp form over one of his shoulders. "We have to cut our losses! Goten, grab Goku and let's go!"

Cut their losses? But one of those losses was Gohan. Besides, there was something wrong (something other than the _everything_ that was wrong): something moving where there shouldn't be movement, or movement going the wrong way. Before Goten could collect himself, before Tien could fly away with Seventeen, before Trunks even had time to dash the tears from his eyes, a thousand arms reached into the car in perfect tandem and grabbed hold of them.

Krillin screamed. He held out a palm with energy glowing in the center, but strangely didn't release it. Tien shouted something incoherent, struggling against the arms holding him down. Goten looked around frantically from where he was still hovering above the car, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

The parade had been attended by almost the whole city, and the streets, though wide, were packed. Now that he had time to think, he realized a normal reaction to an attack in a public place would have been widespread panic, screams and random movement, mayhem and possibly people getting trampled. But underneath the roaring of the blood in his ears the street was eerily silent. Everyone was still there, all of them moving calmly, and the ones close enough to reach into the car were working together to hold Krillin, Tien and Trunks in place.

Goten's brain almost wouldn't process it. Men, women, children, acrobats and soldiers and civilians all doing the same thing at the same time, moving in perfect synchronicity as though they had practiced it a thousand times. The crowd immediately around the car was making room for those farther away, and more hands were piling on. Krillin looked around frantically, his palm still glowing, trying to figure out where to shoot. A child no older than four climbed over the adults' shoulders and grabbed hold of his fingers. Horrified, Krillin extinguished his energy, and Goten, who had almost as good a look at the child's face as Krillin, noticed something even more unsettling.

Everyone, from the four-year-old child holding Krillin's hand to the driver of the float, to the military captain that had been walking immediately behind the car: every single person on that street had the exact same expression on their faces. It was an outraged fury, terrifying in its repetition, but nowhere was it more clear than on the face that flew down to hover in front of Goten.

Everything Goten knew about Gohan, every story the others had told him about his older brother and the quiet hidden strength within him, all the times they had been training and Gohan had held back: suddenly it all flipped in his mind from admiration and pride to bone-melting terror. Gohan—no, not Gohan, someone using Gohan's face—was looking at him with undisguised hatred, and Goten knew he was about to get a taste of what his brother was truly capable of.

Goten went Super Saiyan, and after that he had just enough time for regret — regret that he hadn't been able to save everyone, regret that he hadn't made up with Trunks yet, regret that he would never be able to explain himself to Rin — before a fist slammed into his face and everything went black.

* * *

Two long beeps and a short one: go.

"Here goes nothing," Bulma said to Videl, and hoisted the rocket launcher up on her shoulder.

Videl wasn't sure why she was surprised Bulma had brought a rocket launcher. Far more surprising should have been that Bulma had been able to make a device that tracked psychic energy. She had turned it on in the bungalow the night before and treated them all to perhaps the most disturbing sight they'd ever seen.

The device showed energy as points and lines of white light, and there was a big nexus of it inside the palace. That had not been surprising. What _had_ been surprising, what had been utterly terrifying, was the sheer mass of tiny white lines extending from that nexus all over the city.

"I don't get it," Trunks had said as Chiaotzu gave a small scream and clapped his hands over his mouth.

"He can't be... _controlling_ them all, can he?" Krillin said in a breathy whisper. Tien shook his head decisively, but his eyes were troubled.

"That would be impossible," he said. "I'm not even sure — Bulma, why are some of the lines thicker than others? — he must be merely reading them, or — no, even that would be..."

"The idea is that line width corresponds to signal strength," Bulma said, clicking the device so that it zoomed in to their bungalow. "If psychic powers can be said to have signal strength." Sure enough, one, thin little line extended all the way from the palace to Rin's quarters, connecting itself to a faint little circle of light. In the room where they stood was only darkness.

"He can't be reading them either, then," Videl said, but her voice was not as confident as her words. "Otherwise he would know we're here."

"Maybe he does," Trunks said darkly. They had all exchanged nervous looks.

"If he knew we were here, why would he let us just walk around?" Goten countered.

"Goten is right," Tien said. "No, I think this is something else. Most of these connections are weak, but there are several that are quite strong. See these?"

He pointed at a few strands of light that were thicker than the rest. Some led to various parts of the castle, but there was a cluster of six that all led to the same room. Everyone gasped as they realized what it meant. Tien continued grimly.

"I don't know the meaning of all these weaker connections, but I think it's safe to say he isn't actively reading their thoughts."

"If you say so," Krillin said dubiously.

"But then what _is_ he doing?" Goten demanded, pointing at the thread of light connected to Rin. He looked at Tien, and then Chiaotzu, but both of them only shook their heads.

"It's too bad I didn't think of making this until last night," Bulma said. "I would have liked to do testing with you guys and get a base. Still, the upshot is we know exactly where Zema is. That way we won't have to go running all over the palace trying to find him." She winked at Videl, who was trying not to stare at the six little points of light. Videl had given her a weak smile in return.

Now she turned away and plugged her ears as Bulma fired the rocket launcher. Their position on a roof across the street from the palace afforded direct line of sight to the throne room, where all the little white lines converged. The smoke trail sailed over the river almost silently before crashing into the side of the building with a huge explosion. Bulma dropped the rocket launcher and Videl picked her up by the armpits, flying them both into the newly created hole.

Shouts and screams greeted them. Several guards lay on the floor just inside the hole, bloodied and still, but more were already rushing towards them. Their floor length capes and tall, feathered headdresses did not seem to impede them, and the way they wielded their long, ornate staves proved they were not merely ceremonial.

Videl engaged the first guard, ducking under his staff as he thrust it into the air where her head had been. From a crouch she leapt up and delivered an uppercut that sent him flying. Using her momentum she kicked another guard in the head, dropping him. Behind her Bulma was emptying one of her astonishingly large collection of pistols into the crowd of guards, which did not seem to be getting smaller. In fact...

"We need to barricade the door!" Bulma shouted. As if to punctuate her point more guards poured in through the large double doors. Videl glanced quickly around the room but found a dearth of large furniture. Her scan did reveal a figure sitting on the throne, but she had no time to do more than register it before twisting neatly out of the way of a spear and laying out its owner with a roundhouse kick.

"If you have any ideas on how to do that, I'd love to hear them!"

"Cover me," was all Bulma said. Videl glanced back to see her pocket the pistol in her right hand and take out a capsule case. She was forced to turn back to the battle at that point and lost track of what Bulma was doing until she heard several capsules unpop at once and suddenly found herself sharing space with several cars and a motorboat, all piled in front of the door. She blinked.

"Get the hole we made too," she said.

"Come on, Videl, act a little impressed, won't you?" But Bulma didn't hesitate pulling out another handful of capsules. Once the hole in the wall was barricaded with a small house (in the midst of the fighting Videl's brain found time to wonder if it was the house she had slept in back on the ship) the guards' numbers dwindled until Videl took out the last one with a mighty punch to the gut and a double handed strike to the back of his neck. The two women took stock, but the only ones left were them and the person on the throne.

Videl pulled the extra Faraday headband out of the jacket of her tracksuit. She advanced, noting the unnerving way Zema was just sitting there, regarding her calmly, as though she were nothing more than a curiosity. She had her foot on the lowest step of the small dais leading to the throne when Bulma's voice echoed through the chamber.

"Wait."

Videl glanced back, keeping Zema in her peripheral vision. Bulma was looking down at her tracker, glancing between it and the man on the throne.

"What?" Videl snapped.

"I don't think that's him," Bulma said. Before she had even finished her words there was a flurry of movement in the corner of Videl's eye, and she turned in time to find the man leaping at her, face contorted in a silent snarl. She caught his hands before he could clasp them around her throat, and used his momentum to swing him down the dais onto the floor behind her. He scrambled to his feet, but instead of coming back at Videl he went for Bulma. With an ease that was belied by the wide panic in her eyes Bulma raised her pistol and shot the man in the head, dropping him mere feet away from her.

Bulma sank to her knees, making high-pitched noises that were somewhere between laughing and crying. Videl approached, kneeling in front of her, trying to discern if she had somehow been injured.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, I'm fine!" Bulma dashed sudden tears out of her eyes, laughing in short bursts of little chuckles. "Just a little hysterical. I'll get over it in a minute. But never mind me. Look!"

She thrust the tracker into Videl's hands, and Videl held it up. Bulma had changed the view from top-down to first-person, and Videl waved it around the throne room. Physical objects and people were outlined in shadowy gray, and bright white lines arced over and through everything. Bulma nodded down at the corpse and Videl pointed it at him. Totally dark.

"That way," Bulma said, pointing her chin directly in front of her. Videl turned and saw the shadowy outline of the throne in front of a tapestry-covered wall. Depth was tricky in this view, but somewhere behind the throne was a swirling mass of lines so dense and thick it was almost blinding.

"He was a front," Videl said in shock, looking back at the corpse who, she realized now, looked very little like the statue they had been expected to marvel at on their first day.

"My money's on a secret room," Bulma said, getting to her feet. She seemed more in control of herself now. She strode across the throne room and pulled on the tapestry hanging from the wall. It fluttered down, scenes of elegant birds and green grass (had Ophidia been green once?) rippling and flowing until they rested on the ground. Behind it, sure enough, was a door. There was no knob, but when Bulma pushed it it swung open. She turned to give Videl a look with one raised eyebrow, and then together they entered the room.

Videl didn't know what she had been expecting from a secret room, but this definitely wasn't it. Every inch of the small chamber was crammed with wires and computer screens and medical equipment, and at the center of it all was a large tank full of a glowing green liquid. Inside, an ancient Ophidian man floated, so many wires and tubes coming out of him it was difficult to see where the equipment ended and he began.

"Is that...?" Videl whispered, and Bulma held up the psychic tracker. Even accounting for the lack of depth in the image, it was clear: the desiccated old man glowed with light.

This was Zema.

"How are we going to get the headband on him in there?" Videl was surprised when Bulma snorted. Glancing beside her she saw Bulma lowering the tracker in her left hand and raising a pistol in her right. Bulma glanced at Videl and gave her a tight smile.

"You can look away if it makes you uncomfortable."

"But he's —" Videl had no idea how she intended to end that sentence. Bulma snorted, louder this time.

"What? Defenseless? Clearly not. Look at all the damage he managed to do from in there. Sweetie, please. You are not complicit in this. Just close your eyes and let me do what I need to do. It's okay."

There was nothing about it that was okay, but Videl had no heart to argue with her. She swallowed hard, but resolved not to look away. It didn't matter what Bulma said, she _was_ complicit. She would have gladly killed him in one-on-one combat. It was, in fact, what she had expected to do. How was this any different? (It was, but damned if she could articulate how.)

In the split second it took Bulma's trigger finger to move Videl wondered if Bulma had ever killed anyone in cold blood before. But before the bullet even exited the barrel a hand closed around it, taking the full force of the blast in its palm. By the time Videl's eyes could process that there was someone else in the room the newcomer had already backhanded Bulma into the wall. She looked up at the person's face and for a stupidly hopeful split second, she felt joy.

"Gohan...?" she whispered before his hand closed around her throat.


	12. Chapter 12

Chiaotzu was having a terrible day.

His migraine was now so bad he could barely sit up, much less fly a spaceship, and now that Tien had sent him the signal and he had lifted off from the spaceport, flight control was yelling frantically at him to state his business or land. He thought maybe if he was up to talking he could tell them some lie and get them to let him go, or at least stall them long enough to get where he was going, but it was all he could do to stare out the window into the bright light of day and steer the ship properly. Talking was out of the question.

Once he reached the river the shouting got louder. He wondered if there was a button to make them shut up, but looking for it seemed like too much effort. When he was only a minute or two away from where his friends were, the phrase that had been repeated over and over again for the last several minutes finally penetrated: "Turn back or we will shoot you down."

The missile coming directly towards the front viewport told Chiaotzu he had missed quite a bit more of the shouting than he'd thought.

Even with a migraine he was faster than a missile, but only just. He blasted through the side of the ship and bailed just before the missile slammed into it. The shockwave sent him spinning end-over-end down into the river, and he let the current pull him along for a while before surfacing, his migraine now so bad it felt like his head was literally splitting open.

In a way it was almost better now. The pain had grown bigger than his head, which meant some of it was outside his body. Now there was a small tunnel of relief underneath the dome of pain, and through it he could see clearly as long as he didn't move his eyes too much. Through the tunnel he could see figures in the air, darting around too fast for him to follow. Slowly he flew toward them, keeping his head erect and as still as possible.

As he approached, the tiny figures grew in size until he could make out who was who. There were four figures: Piccolo and Gohan, and Trunks, fighting alongside Krillin. Chiaotzu did not see Tien, and the stab of worry he felt almost brought the tunnel crashing down. Gritting his teeth he kept flying, only to watch as Gohan — but it wasn't Gohan, was it? — took Krillin by both legs and swung him down into the ground. Krillin didn't get up.

Gohan — not Gohan? — Not-Gohan turned to deal with Trunks, and Chiaotzu was now close enough to see the rage on his face. But even as he watched, both him and Piccolo turned suddenly, looking toward the palace in alarm. Without a second glance at Trunks Gohan jetted away. Trunks attempted to use Piccolo's moment of inattention to attack him, but Trunks was badly injured and Piccolo was not as distracted as he seemed. Trunks' fist whistled through the air harmlessly. Piccolo's, on the other hand, sank deep into Trunks' gut, making him wheeze and spit fly from his mouth.

Trunks fell, and Chiaotzu realized he was the only one left. He had no idea what he was going to do all by himself against Piccolo, but the tunnel wouldn't allow him to do anything so complex with his brain as second-guess himself. He kept flying.

At the edge of the tunnel he saw Trunks stir. Apparently he still had some fight left in him. That sight, combined with his intense, pressing need to get the headband off and make the headache go away, combined themselves into a plan with no effort on the part of his poor, overheated brain.

"Hold him still!" he shouted to Trunks. Trunks blinked at him, but when Chiaotzu took a hold of his headband in preparation for pulling it off, understanding flooded the boy's face. Wincing, Trunks leaped up and grabbed Piccolo, pinning him in place, and although it was clear he would not be able to hold him for long, it was also clear he would be able to hold him for long enough.

In the split second between pulling the headband off his own head and setting it on Piccolo's, Chiaotzu had time to drink in sweet empty relief. The dome was gone, replaced with clarity. A clarity that allowed him to see that he was completely surrounded by unfriendly Ophidians and both Trunks and Piccolo had just collapsed.

But the headache was gone. And, for a few seconds at least, that was the only thing that mattered.

* * *

"You know, it's quite a disturbing feeling, seeing you and yet not being able to feel you."

The voice was coming from Gohan's vocal cords, being fed through Gohan's lips, the accompanying facial expressions being made with his eyes and cheeks and mouth. But it was not Gohan speaking. The wrongness of hearing someone else speak in his voice, watching someone else look at her through his eyes, sent a hot shiver down Videl's spine. The fingers lightly gripping her throat, restrictive but not suffocating, were covered in his skin, and they radiated his warmth, but somehow even the placement of the finger pads felt alien. Gohan would never take her by the throat like this, but if he ever did, Videl knew this was not how he would do it.

"I knew Bulma was clever, but I had no idea she could make something like this. She did make these, I presume?"

The voice had an Ophidian accent, the sibilants somewhere between a hiss and a lisp. The hand not around her throat lifted up to gesture lightly at the headband still around Videl's forehead. Despite the fact that he was not pressing on her windpipe she found it hard to breathe. Even the gesture had been wrong.

"You know, I think I might keep you," Zema went on. "You're not personally to my taste, but you do suit this body terribly well, and you already have a child together. It would be such fun to raise a child again, I haven't done that in a long time."

The thought of Pan being raised by this monstrosity was enough to send a spike of adrenaline cutting through her fear. She struggled, striking at his knee, instep, groin, attempting to bend his fingers the wrong way. It was like trying to pull at steel bars. He snorted derisively, the kind of laugh Gohan had never once made in his life.

"Well, enough of that. I'll be taking this."

His free hand reached up to her headband, hooking his first two fingers between it and her skin and pulling up, and in her panic, in the moment before it fully released, Videl set her mind in a certain pattern, knowing it was probably futile, knowing there was nothing she could do but try.

* * *

_Secretly, Piccolo loved playing hide and seek with Pan, though it was a game she didn't always intend to play. Sometimes she wandered off without thinking and then Piccolo would open a cupboard or Gohan would sit down to do some work and there she'd be, splayed out and fast asleep._

_This time she was deliberately hiding from him, and affection warred with annoyance the longer he went without finding her. Sometimes he almost thought he could hear her in the next room, but somehow she was always a few steps ahead of him._

_He opened a toy box only to find it full to the brim with toys, but entirely empty of mischievous toddlers. There was nowhere else in the room to hide, so he went to the door and entered the next room. This one was bare of everything but a closet, which he opened. Kami was inside, peering at him sternly from amid several fur coats._

_Piccolo grunted in surprise and took a step back. Kami continued to stare at him. For a long moment all Piccolo could think was,_ _**You're not Pan** _ _, but then he collected himself and stood up straighter, meeting Kami's gaze._

" _What are you doing here, old man?" he demanded impatiently. Pan might be getting further away the longer he stood here, but the old Namekian's gaze arrested his attention, no longer looking stern so much as exasperated. Clearly there was something obvious he was missing, but what was it?_

_Movement in the corner of his eye made him break from Kami's gaze, and he found Nail standing in the empty room behind him, arms folded over his chest with the same expectant look on his face as Kami. Piccolo had never been more confused. What on earth were two long gone Namekians doing in Gohan's house?_

_As soon as he thought this, Piccolo came to himself. He wasn't in Gohan's house. He couldn't be. He'd been through far too many rooms, none of them familiar. Kami and Nail were a part of him, so the fact that he could see them meant..._

_None of this was real._

_Everything around him began to dissolve, Kami giving him a pleased smile before disappearing along with the house. Now he was floating in a blank void — no. He could feel gritty rubble on the back of his head, strange fabric chafing his arms. He was sleeping. He_ _ **had been**_ _sleeping._

_And now he was awake._

* * *

The brief glimpse Videl had gotten of Tien's mind castle had given her the impression of a literal castle, with a moat and turrets and towers. Her own was closer to a heavily fortified house than a castle, but it was, just like Tien's, a building. Behind Zema, where his mind castle should have been, extending on all sides into formless infinity, was a wall. There was no top to climb over, no bottom to dig under. She could traverse that wall her whole life and never come to the end of it. She suddenly regretted hesitating to let Bulma kill him.

"Oh?" said the man in front of the wall. He was a younger version of the shriveled-up man in the tank, and he looked down at his body, intrigued. "This is an interesting technique. You link minds in a sort of neutral arena — for what purpose? To communicate?"

What purpose indeed. All she had done was delay the inevitable. Even if by some miracle she defeated him in physical combat here in the image training field, it wouldn't matter. This was not a true battlefield of fists and blows. It was, in fact, the exact site of Zema's greatest strength. There was nothing she could do to him, no opening she could exploit. He would take over her mind, and that would be that.

Into this despair, however, came a nudge at the back of her mind. She held perfectly still, checking to see if Zema had noticed. He was still preoccupied with feeling out his younger body, and did not seem interested in an answer to his question. The nudge felt like Piccolo, and it was so faint it didn't even consist of words. Just the impression of a single concept: stall.

Well. That she could do.

"I guess it could be used to communicate," Videl said, crouching down into her strongest stance. "Mostly we just use it to fight."

Zema looked at her in surprise, and then threw back his head and laughed. His reptilian fangs shone in the non-existent light, and his laugh was a horrible gurgle.

"Trial by combat? Oh, why not? There's something appealing about fighting in my own body again, and this will clearly please you. Believe it or not, I do love to please people. Very well. I'll even let you start."

That was fine with Videl. She flew at him with everything she had, ignoring the immediate realization that he was simply toying with her. Despite the fact that they were both keeping to the normal rules of reality, he was apparently almost as formidable a martial artist as he was a psychic. Probably Gohan or even Krillin would have less trouble with him, but he was so far out of her league it was pathetic. Wounded pride and desperation welled up inside her, distracting her, and she began to give way.

She found he wasn't just toying with her, nor was he simply humoring her: he was moving the fight farther and farther back toward her mind castle. Videl didn't know what would happen if they reached it. She didn't want to find out.

If ever there was a time to break the rules, this was it. But a split second before letting off an impossibly huge ki blast, she realized that if she broke faith he would probably just put an end to the conflict immediately. He was enjoying himself, playing a game with her, and nobody liked it when their opponent flipped the game board over because they were losing.

Game. He was playing a game. He liked games. And the game he liked the most was…

"Clearly I'm not going to beat you this way," Videl said, backing off slightly and trying to look desperate. It was depressingly easy. "How would you like to play a different game instead? That way I have a chance."

He cocked his head at her, not even slightly winded.

"What did you have in mind?"

Videl considered looking a bit winsome as she said it, but decided not to overdo it.

"We could play your favorite game."

Zema froze for a moment, and Videl wondered if she had overplayed her hand. But then his face lit up like it was Christmas morning.

"You mean for real, don't you?"

Videl nodded. The noise that came out of Zema's throat was almost a squeal.

"That sounds delightful! You can go first again."

What was it the man had said? _Don't start big. It's not about brute force._ The winner of the one game Videl had seen had won not through armies or death but through forgiveness. She wasn't sure she could pull off something that skillful, but she didn't need to win, just take up time. Start small, then. But Zema was still miles stronger than her. What was one step above where he was?

Videl had been around Super Saiyans often enough by the time Lord Beerus had shown up that she had a vague idea of how it worked and what it felt like. Gohan had been unable to describe it to her in a way he felt satisfied with, and Goten had been more satisfied with his explanation but had left Videl far more confused.

Upon being part of the ritual to invoke the Super Saiyan God, however, she had gotten a first-hand taste: there was a tightness in her back, a tingling along every inch of her skin, the sensation of heat dissipating through her hair and eyes, and power, _so much power_ coursing through her body it had been overwhelming. And even then, she had been surrounded by five others who were capable of commanding much more power than she. It had been a terrifying experience she wasn't sure she ever wanted to replicate. As best she could from memory, she replicated it now.

Zema stumbled back at the force of her aura exploding outward. He threw up a hand over his eyes to shield them from the dust being kicked up by the fierce winds surrounding her body. Her hair stood up at right angles from her scalp, the black now glowing yellow. Her eyes felt hot, and belatedly she remembered that Super Saiyan had an element of anger to it, and she added that in too. In order to really sell it, she had her tracksuit jacket shred itself to pieces, leaving only the white T-shirt behind. It didn't make any sense, but it looked damn cool.

At least Zema seemed to think so, and that was all that mattered. He was staring at her in something almost like awe. Faster than she could possibly move in real life she shot forward, hitting him with a punch that sent him flying backwards. She pursued him instantly, and they traded blows, the tables completely turned. She got lost for a moment in the feeling of utter power, but then Zema jumped back and roared hard enough to make the tendons on his neck stand out. His hair, a tuft of rusty red on top of his head, flashed yellow also, and around him his aura spiraled and flowed, lightning sparking in the air around him. He grinned at her, and it was almost a friendly grin, as though he had just told a joke. Then he was on her, and the tables were turned once more.

They continued in this pattern for several minutes: her going red, him going blue, her going blue with red. She was afraid she was starting to bore him, and she was also afraid she was about to die, because the only thing left for him to do now was that strange form Goku had reached once, that Gohan had told her about with a faraway look in his eyes, a form to rival the gods themselves.

But even if he was growing bored, he wasn't disinterested enough to end the game, because, when it was his turn to change, instead of a massive aura flaring outward, he grew still. His hair changed back to normal, and the only thing different about him was his clothes: a striped collar hanging from his shoulders, full trousers gathered around his ankles, a sash around his waist, gold gauntlets on his wrists.

A God of Destruction.

He grinned at her, a sly thing in the corner of his mouth, the smile of somebody who knew they were victorious, and he charged up a ball of purple destroyer energy over his open palm. But Videl knew something, something she was almost certain he did not know or had forgotten, and she too let the pretend aura of Super Saiyan fall away. In its place, a change of clothes: a blue surcoat with prominent shoulders, a sash around her waist, and white boots. To complete it, her hair receded into a thick mohawk. Whether he had forgotten or simply didn't know that a Supreme Kai was matched to every God of Destruction, he knew it now. He stared at her, the glowing ball of energy in his palm useless against her if he didn't want to destroy himself in the process. Slowly he let it die away, the smile fading from his face.

"If we were playing with mere words," he said, "I would without hesitation declare you the winner." He began to walk towards her, shedding the garb of the Destroyer God as he did so. "But in this playing field I will always be the winner. I've realized this arena is not some neutral space or training grounds. No, what you don't seem to understand is that this is a dream we are both having together. Our minds are creating a story in tandem." He was almost within reach of her, her back against the wall of her mind castle. "And when it comes to minds, mine trumps everyone else's. If this is a dream, darling, then I am the Lucid Dreamer."

He was right next to her now, looking down at her with a condescending smile. It was now or never. Videl reached out with the back of her mind to the place she'd felt the nudge before, and got another nudge that told her the time was right.

"If you are a dreamer," she said, with a smile of her own, snatching out with her hands to grasp his shoulders, "then I'm the one shaking you awake!"

And she shook him, right at the same moment Piccolo crashed into the throne room. A sucking, deep inhalation of shock and horror ripped through their shared connection as the dream and reality converged, and she had one last impression of a reptilian face, eyes wide in terror, before the connection released and she was free.


	13. Chapter 13

Piccolo didn't notice, at first, that he was standing in a puddle of green fluid and broken glass. There were, in fact, only two things he knew for certain. One, he had a raging headache. It was so bad he was having tunnel vision and difficulty concentrating. He barely even knew where he was. But there was one other thing he knew that more than made up for his discomfort: Videl was all right.

She had sunk to her knees on the floor, but she was looking up at him in wonder and relief. As far as he could tell she didn't seem to be hurt, but as he watched she started trembling. He staggered forward and knelt next to her, studying her eyes intently.

"You're in shock," he informed her after a moment. "I think that's what this is. That's not the one where I have to give you a tourniquet, is it? No, it's the pen thingy..."

She giggled, something he was pretty sure was not a good sign. Still, he could be mistaken. _What to Expect When You're Expecting_ and its ilk had been common around the Son-Satan house from the time Pan was born, and he could hardly meditate while babysitting. But most of the first aid information had been baffling and by now had gotten mixed up in his head.

"I think you might be the one in shock," Videl said, using his shoulders to stand up. "I'm fine. What happened? How did you know how to help me?"

She glanced around and saw Gohan, collapsed on the floor, and knelt quickly next to him with a gasp. Piccolo, who could tell Gohan was still breathing, stood as well, taking stock of the room around him. Several feet away a desiccated body was twitching among shards of glass and broken equipment. As he watched, it gave one last shuddering gasp and fell still.

"Where's Bulma?" Videl called. She had placed Gohan's head on her lap and seemed understandably reluctant to leave him. Piccolo glanced around and found a shock of blue hair underneath some rubble in a corner of the room. He unearthed her gently, but aside from some scrapes and bruises the only major wound he found was a large goose egg on her head.

"She's all right," he told Videl. "I think."

"What happened?" Videl said again. "Where are the others?"

Piccolo shook his head, lifting Bulma gently and setting her down next to Videl. "I felt you fighting him and got here as soon as I could. I didn't get a chance to see what was going on. In fact, I should be asking _you_ that. Where are we? How did we get here?"

Videl lifted an errant lock of Gohan's hair and smoothed it down, her brow gently furrowed. She seemed reluctant to answer him. Not wanting to waste time, Piccolo reached out with his mind to try to read hers, and to his great shock felt himself shoved away, bars and gates and fences he hadn't known she had swiftly closing him out. She was looking at him warily, but when he did no more than stare back at her in surprise, her shoulders slumped.

"Sorry," she said.

"There's no need for apology," Piccolo said, his voice faint with surprise. "But clearly much has happened. It would be faster to simply show me."

She had to brace herself for it, but eventually she nodded. "You're right. Go ahead."

It took only a few moments, but by the end of them Piccolo understood her reticence, and he probably owed her an apology in return. But there were more urgent things to attend to at the moment.

"I see," he said, standing up. "I don't know what kind of shape our friends are in, but we had better go check on them."

"Do you know why Gohan hasn't woken up yet?" Videl asked, looking up at him from the ground. He bent, hooking his fingers under Gohan's knees and shoulders, a part of him realizing he hadn't held this boy since he was much smaller.

"No," he said, and trusted Videl to see the unease beneath his curt reply. "But we can worry about that once we know the others are safe."

Videl stood, taking one last lingering look at Gohan before picking up Bulma, and together they flew out the hole in the wall, leaving behind the mess for someone else to clean up.

* * *

Neither Videl nor Piccolo had a clear sense of exactly where on the parade route the ambush had been, but once they took to the air the location was excessively clear. The parade route had started at one edge of the city and gone straight through it, ending at the palace. The entire city had turned out for the celebration, and almost all one hundred thousand of them had been lined up along the long boulevard that ran next to the river. Now, instead of a long ribbon of spectators, there was a clump roughly halfway along its length, and at the center of it was a badly damaged vehicle and so many people that Videl and Piccolo could hardly tell if their friends were among them.

Piccolo assured her he could feel their energy, but he kept from her how faint that energy was. The exception to this was Chiaotzu, who reached out to Piccolo and gave him a mental picture of the situation.

"They're all in chaos down there," Piccolo told Videl. "Somehow killing Zema has made them unable to act. We have a small window of time before they figure out what's going on to get our friends out of there."

"Why can't they meet us? Are they _all_ hurt?" Videl wasn't panicking, but there was a desperate worry in her eyes Piccolo knew could turn that way easily.

"Most of them are," he said, "but it doesn't seem that any of them are critically injured. The more pressing matter is that your ship was destroyed. Even if no one was after us, we have no way to get off this planet."

Videl's mouth pressed itself into a thin line. "Then the first thing we need to do is find a place to lie low," she said.

"I agree," Piccolo said, scanning the horizon. "Do you have any ideas?" Videl was silent for a moment, and Piccolo glanced at her. She was not looking out, but down, and he followed her gaze to a lone figure running up the now empty parade route. She glanced at him, smiling grimly.

"As a matter of fact, I do."

* * *

Rin was practically in raptures at getting to meet Piccolo, one of the 'volunteers', and when Videl explained that their undercover operation had snafu'd she was eager to help. Leaving Piccolo and Chiaotzu to gather up the rest of their friends and whisk them away while the citizens were in disarray, Rin led Videl, who was still carrying Bulma, to her private dwelling.

Despite Rin's apologies at the small size, Videl was actually impressed. She and Gohan had rented an apartment less nice than this during college, much to the dismay of both her father and Gohan's mother; one because it was small and cheap, and the other because they were sharing a bedroom out of wedlock. Their current living arrangements suited both their parents much better, but Videl still had fond memories of that apartment, which even at two bedrooms was smaller than Rin's studio that overlooked the river.

While Videl got Bulma situated in the bed, Rin explained that wards of the state were given accommodations from the government rather than having to pay for their own, which Videl thought was supposed to explain how a young girl just starting out could afford a place this nice. Having come from a government with a much more laissez-faire attitude she caught herself thinking that this level of attention might be nice; then she remembered the thing in the tank that had been behind such attentions and shivered.

Before long Piccolo and Chiaotzu returned with everyone in tow. It was almost comical: Piccolo had Gohan and Goku slung over both shoulders and was carrying Vegeta in his arms, leaving Chiaotzu to levitate six people in the air behind him. But there was nothing funny about the way everyone they were carrying was either limp and unconscious or bruised and moaning. Rin's eyes grew wide as they laid out their charges all over her apartment floor, propping up heads with pillows and wadded up laundry.

"I don't understand," she said from where she was nursing Goten's black eye. "What happened to them?"

Videl glanced at Piccolo from where she knelt next to Trunks, putting ice on the worst of his bruises, but Piccolo chose to deal with this question by ignoring it.

"Didn't any of you think to bring senzu beans?" he scolded, aiming this mostly at Chiaotzu. Chiaotzu didn't look up from cleaning the blood off Tien's face.

"We did," he said. "We left them on the ship for safekeeping."

Piccolo swore softly. "Videl, tell me this isn't what I think it is." He gestured at Krillin, lying next to Bulma on the bed, and Videl got up to look. Piccolo raised Krillin's shirt to reveal massive bruising and strange lumps poking up through his skin. Upon closer inspection Videl realized they were his broken ribs. His breathing, which was whispery and labored, suddenly became painful to even listen to. Piccolo was looking at her with a question in his eyes. "You don't think it's punctured his lungs, do you?"

Videl bit her lower lip. She had no way of knowing without asking Krillin himself, and there were bruises and goose eggs all over his head that made it unlikely he was going to regain consciousness anytime soon. Rin spoke up.

"If you need a healer, I can go find one," she offered, standing up. Alarmed, Videl started to shake her head, but Piccolo raised a hand, cutting her off. He studied Rin intently for a few moments.

"It must be someone trustworthy," he said. "For reasons I cannot now disclose, the fewer people that know about this the better."

"I'm still in touch with the medical overseer of the orphanage where I lived as a child," Rin said earnestly. "If I ask her not to say anything, she won't."

Piccolo studied Rin for a few more minutes, and then nodded.

"Very well," he said. "But you must ask her in person. Even the airwaves could be compromised."

Rin nodded smartly. "She's old and doesn't attend celebrations, so she should still be in her dwelling. I won't be more than a few minutes."

As she ran out the door Videl fixed Piccolo with an incredulous stare.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? She's sweet, but she buys completely into all the propaganda they feed them around here. She could still betray us."

Piccolo shook his head. "I read her mind. She believes the lies you've all told her implicitly. And she is fond of Goten. She won't compromise us."

Videl swallowed her objections and went to get ice to put on Krillin's ribs.

She didn't pray, as a rule. It was hard to feel the need when you had met deity personally and it had barely finished puberty. But something in her soul felt to make a demand of the universe. _Please,_ it said. _Let us all be okay._

_Please._

* * *

Goten awoke to the sound of a door opening. He stirred, annoyed that his mom still wasn't respecting his privacy, and then he heard a male voice he didn't know, speaking in an Ophidian accent, and remembered where he was. One eye felt puffy and swollen, but the other he managed to crack open a bit, just enough to see blurred figures moving around. The voice spoke again, and he heard Piccolo answer it. Wasn't Piccolo kidnapped? Had they succeeded? Where was he?

Before Goten could attempt to sit up he heard the strange voice say, "Wrong answer," and without warning Piccolo collapsed. Videl and Chiaotzu were yelling, but more strangers, all Ophidian, poured in through the door and grabbed them. Goten tried to sit up, but his limbs weren't obeying him, and all he managed was to thrash weakly. One of the strangers picked him up, and even the adrenaline rush he got from attempting to fight his way free wasn't enough to do more than inconvenience his captor.

"Goten!" It was Rin. He turned toward the sound as best he could. "Goten, I'm so sorry! I didn't tell them your secret, I promise!"

"What secret?" It was the voice of the first man. The large, authoritative figure that went with it strode forward, looking sternly down at Rin. She glanced rapidly between him and Goten.

"Don't you think you should tell them?" Her voice was low, as though even now there might still be secrets to keep. "I think now might be a good time."

What secret was she talking about? He glanced around, a difficult task in the arms of a much bigger man, but he caught glimpses of his friends being loaded into the back of a vehicle, including the limp forms of his dad and Gohan. He looked back at Rin, totally bewildered.

"You know," she prompted between clenched teeth. "About what your dad does."

His dad? His dad trained. Sometimes he grew vegetables. Occasionally he allowed Goten to join him in one or both of these activities. That couldn't be what she meant. What did she _think_ his dad did?

Oh.

He drew in a breath to speak, and then realized there was nothing he could say. Rin waited, but eventually he looked down and shook his head. With an impatient noise she turned to the man next to her. He wore the same blue uniform as everyone else, including the 'volunteers', but his collar had gold decorations and he looked like he was used to being in charge. Fearlessly Rin spoke to him like she was scolding a silly child.

"His dad's with the Galactic Patrol," she said. "Him." She pointed at Goku, being carried toward the vehicle. "He was undercover."

The man looked from Rin to Goten to Goku and back again. "Is that what they told you, sweetie?" His voice was kind, at odds with the harsh tone he had used so far. Rin looked unsure, and nodded. The man put a hand on her shoulder. The gesture was fatherly, compassionate. "Honey, they've been lying to you."

As quick as birds startled by a noise Rin's eyes flicked to Goten's, _willing_ him to contradict the words. Goten realized he had a choice. He could deny it, stupid as that would be. Rin would believe him. Even if this man told her otherwise, even in the face of all the evidence, Rin would take his word for it. That was just the kind of person she was. It might even be the right thing to do, planting seeds of doubt in her mind against the government she trusted so implicitly.

But.

This was probably the last time he would ever see her. Either they would find a way to break free and they would go home, or they were done for, dead or captured forever. Seeing her again had no place in either of those scenarios. Whatever he said now would have to count as his goodbye. And the thought of using his last words to tell her more lies was unendurable.

"I'm sorry," Goten said to her, looking her in the eye. "We came to rescue our friends from being kidnapped. We're not with the Galactic Patrol. And they're not volunteers. I'm —"

The burly man holding him clapped a hand over his mouth before he could say more, but it didn't matter. He couldn't have gone on anyway. Rin's shattered expression precluded words. The man, who still had his hand on Rin's shoulder, moved to pull her in for an embrace, his face almost as full of pain as hers. The last Goten saw of Rin was her shoving the man's arm away, the pain on her face now mingling with the first anger he had ever seen there.

He had no time to figure out what it meant. A boom cracked through the atmosphere, followed by a whistling sound that drew closer and closer. Everyone looked up to the sky in time to see a streak speed down and land directly in front of the man holding Videl. The landing kicked up dust thick enough that it obscured the figure now standing in the middle of the crowd of officers and prisoners, but even before the dust had fully cleared, Goten knew who it was. Even if he hadn't recognized the distinctive silhouette, the voice that called out was unmistakable.

"Found them!" said Buu.


	14. Chapter 14

_When Bao didn't show up for practice that morning, Chiaotzu exchanged sly grins with Tien. His experiment had been more successful than he'd dared hope. If he'd made Bao too scared to even come to practice he was going to get kicked out before the week was through. Chiaotzu was so pleased with himself he smiled all through practice, which earned him an extra whack from Master Shen — one last thing to add to Bao's account book._

_After morning practice was chores. Usually Bao was the one who helped him carry firewood from the woodshed to the kitchens for lunch. Even having to haul firewood on his own was worth being free of Bao — his stupid face and his stupid stink and the way he made fun of the way Chiaotzu looked — Bao should just not show up for practice all the rest of the day and then he'd be out by nightfall, and Chiaotzu would be the happiest person on earth. Chiaotzu pushed open the door to the woodshed humming an off key little tune, so distracted by his good mood that he almost didn't see it._

_Hanging from the rafters of the large shed was a corpse. The breeze now coming from the outside set it swinging and it turned a fraction of a degree, enough for Chiaotzu to make out the profile._

_It was Bao._

_His face was black and purple. His limbs were stiff. Flies already buzzed around him. From the stories the Masters told of famous assassinations, Chiaotzu knew he was not looking at a fresh body. Bao had been dead for several hours already. But that was impossible. Chiaotzu had just seen him that morning. He had been alive only hours before. For him to be several hours dead meant —_

_Screaming, tears streaming down his face, Chiaotzu turned and ran, and didn't stop until he reached Tien._

* * *

Tien felt it the moment his bones snapped back into place. He opened his eyes and found a large pink face hovering over his own.

"All done!"

Buu leaned back and Tien sat up. He felt like he always did after eating a senzu bean or being healed by Dende: sore but with no earthly reason to be. As he sat there getting reacquainted with his body Buu moved on, hovering his hands now over Trunks, who lay next to Tien. Getting his bearings, Tien found he was in a cave — no, a building. A building so old and decrepit it had fallen partially back to the earth. It was something like a temple or a palace: ornate columns and bas-relief sculptures adorned one end, while at the other the roof had collapsed and the building was just so much rubble. He was the second in a line of bodies, all in various stages of health. Goten, at one end of the line, was already awake and holding his head, which, if they had been arranged best to worst, meant Krillin, on Tien's other side, had sustained the worst injuries of all of them.

"Tien!" Chiaotzu came flying from behind, tackling Tien with a big hug and hanging on to his neck tightly. Tien put a hand over his friend's arms where they encircled his neck, not even bothering to hide his smile.

"Chiaotzu," he said, letting his relief bleed into his voice. "What happened?"

"It's kind of a long story," Videl said from behind him. He turned, and found another row of bodies: the six they had come to rescue. No, five. Piccolo was already standing, looking down at the scene impassively.

"It seems we've got time," Tien said. Beside him Trunks sat up with a sigh so deep it might have been a groan.

"Thanks, Buu," he said.

"Buu happy to help," Buu said, moving on to Bulma.

"I assume we won," Tien said to Videl, her pinched expression making it a little more of a question than it might have been otherwise.

"Zema won't be bothering anyone else, if that's what you mean," Piccolo said.

Tien raised an eyebrow. "You didn't fight him, did you?"

Piccolo inclined his head slightly in Videl's direction, the suggestion of a proud smirk on his face. "No. But she did."

Videl twisted from where she sat, and Tien realized she had Gohan's sleeping head on her knees. She gave Piccolo a glare that was equal parts confusion and embarrassment.

"Hardly," she said, turning back to face Tien. "I stalled him long enough for Piccolo to get there. I need to thank you, actually. It was your training that even gave me a chance."

"Not at all," Tien said, smiling. "I hardly deserve credit. You were already a skilled martial artist."

Videl shook her head. "I mean you taught me image training. It probably saved my life."

Tien's smile dropped, along with his stomach. "Are you saying you fought him _mind to mind_?"

"More like invited him to toy with me." Videl clenched her fists. "Lucky for me he took the invitation."

Tien found himself speechless with retroactive terror. The courage it must have taken her to face a monster like that was hard to imagine.

"Now it Gohan turn!"

Everyone watched as Buu straightened from healing Goten and toddled over to Gohan. He held his hands over him and they began to glow, but after just a few seconds the glow dissipated and Buu frowned.

"There not anything wrong with him," he said. Videl blinked at him for a few moments, and then looked back down at her husband and shook him. He didn't respond.

Bulma, second to last to be healed by Buu, strode over, putting her hands on her hips. "What do you mean? Look at him!"

Buu held up his hands in a helpless gesture. "Look, Buu fix what broken. There nothing broken. So Buu can't fix."

Videl broke in. "Buu, something is definitely broken. He won't wake up. That's not normal."

"Normal for Buu," Buu muttered darkly.

Videl took in a long, patient breath. "Well, it's not normal for Gohan. Something is still wrong."

"Maybe he _really_ sleepy," Buu suggested helpfully.

"Oh for Pete's sake." Bulma bent over her husband and slapped him hard across the face several times. Tien found his heart in his mouth despite himself, but Vegeta stirred not a whit.

"Maybe... Zema did something to them?" Goten said tremulously.

"If that's the case, why is _he_ awake?" Trunks pointed accusingly at Piccolo. Piccolo frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown.

"That's a good question," he said. "Unfortunately it's one I don't have the answer to."

Bulma turned to Chiaotzu. "If Zema did something to them, then you should be able to undo it, right?" It wasn't really a question. She just had that much faith. Chiaotzu blinked at her in confusion and Bulma grew impatient. "Like you did with me, remember? He messed with my mind, and then I couldn't wake up afterwards. He must have done the same thing to them. So just do whatever you did with me."

Tien could feel Chiaotzu trying to think of an argument, but he knew Bulma was right. _Just try_ , he said to Chiaotzu privately. _It won't hurt anything just to look._

Chiaotzu gave him a dubious look, but then he nodded and looked toward the line of sleeping figures.

"Probably best to do Goku first," Bulma said reluctantly. "Then he can Instant Transmission us out of here."

Chiaotzu knelt next to Goku and, with one last dubious glance at Tien, closed his eyes.

* * *

_There it was, a small building at the top of a hill in a wood deep in the mountains. Grandpa Gohan's little cottage, the place where Son Goku had grown up. Exactly as Chiaotzu had expected. But the air was thick and still, and there were no animal sounds. The whole mountain seemed to be holding its breath. And the front door was locked._

_Chiaotzu stared at the lock, biting his lower lip. The people that the stranger back on Earth had locked away had all been barely more than sleeping, their defenses easily slipped past without doing harm. Goku's mind was so tightly folded in on itself that there were no openings to slip through unnoticed. He was going to have to break the lock._

_Chiaotzu trembled. He could punch down a real wooden door easy. No problem. But what would punching down_ _ **this**_ _door do?_

_Several long minutes passed as Chiaotzu tried to muster the courage to force the lock. He could feel that this was merely the first door of many, that this would be a minor breach, easily put to rights. He knew Goku, knew how easily he trusted, how quickly he bounced back from things. This lock was merely a formality, and breaking it would be no more devastating to Goku's psyche than saying something slightly rude. Chiaotzu knew all of this was true._

_And still his fingers trembled and sweat poured down his face._

_Finally he squeezed his eyes shut and broke the lock with a swift open hand strike. It gave way easily and the door swung open with an inviting creak, but still Chiaotzu had to wait for a wave of nausea to pass before he could cross the threshold._

_The inside was bigger than the outside, and the objects inside were huge. The low bed towered over Chiaotzu's head and the dresser was as tall as a building. Chiaotzu tried to wrap his head around the strange proportions, and with a flash of insight he knew: Goku was a grown man, almost 6 feet tall, but in his memory everything in this cottage was bigger than him. In order for grown-up Goku to feel small here, everything had to be extra big. To tiny Chiaotzu, therefore, it was like stepping into a giant's house._

_That mystery solved, his attention turned to the bigger mystery of how to wake Goku up. Concentrating, Chiaotzu could tell Goku was much further in than this, but he had no sense of how to get there himself._

_Looking around the cottage, he was reminded, of course, of Bao. But where Bao had objects strewn around everywhere in a disorganized mess, here what little there was was neatly organized. No, not organized, Chiaotzu realized. Not exactly. It was simply that there were so few objects in the cottage that it was obvious where everything went._

_There was the four-star ball, of course, on its pedestal of honor. There was the nyoibo, hung on the wall. And there was an orange gi, folded neatly, ready and waiting to be worn. And that was it. Those were the only significant objects here. It was a puzzling insight into the way Goku's mind worked, but it gave him no clue what to do. And he knew what would happen if he did the wrong thing._

_Experimentally Chiaotzu reached out to touch the four-star ball (the pedestal was so high he had to levitate just to reach it). The barest brush of his fingertips on the smooth, cool surface brought happy memories of grandpa, afternoons spent learning martial arts, stories at night and delicious food every day. Well. That was not unexpected. But he still had no idea what to do._

_Touching the nyoibo gave him a confused jumble of power, the sensation of flight, a deep love for something Chiaotzu couldn't identify, and, most distressingly, the sensation of touching Chi-Chi's bikini._

_After that he was almost afraid to touch the gi, but when he did the only sensation he felt was the pure joy of fighting, the feeling behind the particular grin Goku wore when he was in his element. And that was all. Even rummaging through the drawers of the dresser or peeking under the bed revealed nothing else. He went back outside and looked around, but there was nothing there either._

_Reluctantly he entered the cottage again, staring almost accusingly at the three objects, but no ideas came to him. He ran scenarios through his mind, wondering what would happen if he removed the four-star ball from its pedestal, or unfolded the gi and put it on, or used the nyoibo, but the truth was he had no idea what he was doing._

_What had happened with Bao had been an accident. He could admit that now. He hadn't understood what he was doing and so he couldn't be held fully responsible. But now he knew the kind of harm he was capable of. If he went and messed around anyway and something bad happened to Goku as a result? That would be entirely his fault._

_But._

_Zema had trapped Goku and the others in their own minds, and Chiaotzu was the only one who could free them. If he didn't even try, he would be letting Zema win without a fight. What would he say to Goten or Chi-Chi — Videl or Bulma or Trunks? How could he face them knowing their loved ones were gone because he was too scared to try to save them? It didn't matter what had happened in the past. He had to do something_ _**now** _ _._

_He floated up to the nyoibo again and reached out a hand, ready to take it down from the wall where it hung. His fingers got within millimeters of it before they froze._

_(feet swinging freely over dry splintered wood)_

_Chiaotzu swallowed, squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his fist and opened it, and reached for the nyoibo again._

_(rope creaking almost inaudibly)_

_His hand was now shaking so hard he accidentally brushed the nyoibo without meaning to, and another jumble of sensations and memories flooded his brain. Most of it went by too quickly for him to get a grasp on it, but one feeling overrode them all: Goku's overwhelming desire to protect the people important to him. And one of the people near the very top of that list was Krillin._

_The list of foes that had threatened him was long, but in that brief burst of sensation Chiaotzu saw them all. Because Goku remembered. Goku might be a bit of a simpleton, but there were some things he never forgot. The people who had threatened his friends and family were one of them._

_And on that list, long and exhaustive as it was, was Chiaotzu's own face._

* * *

After almost half an hour of tense waiting, Chiaotzu finally stirred. Videl was still camped out next to Gohan, watching him breathe, reminding herself that he was still alive, that they hadn't failed yet. The others quickly turned their eyes to Chiaotzu at the first sign of motion, but only Videl, situated where she was, could also see Tien.

He had been sitting right next to Chiaotzu the whole time, ostensibly meditating. The look on his face when Chiaotzu stirred was sad and knowing, and so Videl knew before the others did that Chiaotzu had failed.

"Well?" Bulma demanded first. Chiaotzu hadn't even opened his eyes yet. It was hard to say how, exactly, but it was clear he was in his own body again, despite only having moved ever so slightly. Half an hour ago the reverse had happened: unable to say how, Videl nevertheless could have pinpointed the exact second Chiaotzu had made contact.

Now he was shaking, and as they all watched, tears began to stream out of his closed eyes and down his round, red cheeks. Tien placed his hand gently on Chiaotzu's back, and Chiaotzu turned and flung himself on Tien's knee, sobbing as though his little heart had broken.

"What happened?" Krillin demanded.

Goten looked at Chiaotzu in bewilderment. "Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry!" Chiaotzu wailed, his voice muffled as he cried into Tien's robe. "I can't do it! I'm sorry, I just can't!"

"Geez, buddy, get a grip," Bulma said, arms folded over her chest. "It's not the end of the world. Goku's too strong for you, right?"

Chiaotzu's sobbing abruptly stopped. Slowly he peeked an eye out from where his face was buried in Tien's leg. "What?" His voice was nasally from crying, but he sounded genuinely confused. Bulma waved her hand in the air impatiently.

"You told me you couldn't do this stuff if they were stronger than you, remember?" She lightly smacked her own forehead. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Of course this isn't going to work."

Chiaotzu stared at Bulma for a moment, before the tears overtook him and he stuffed his face into Tien's robe again. Videl was still the only one watching Tien's face, and his sad, knowing expression changed tenor in some way Videl could not define.

"It's not just a matter of strength," Tien said, rubbing small circles on Chiaotzu's back. "Goku isn't attacking him. He's simply... hiding."

Bulma blinked, eyes darting between Tien and Chiaotzu. "I beg your pardon?"

"I don't know what Zema did to them, but Goku is… not there. Perhaps if Chiaotzu knew him better... But even then..." Tien trailed off tiredly.

"I'm really going to need you to start speaking English." Bulma bent so that she was looking directly into Tien's eyes, her own practically sparking. "Chiaotzu knows me even less than he knows Goku, but getting me to wake up was a piece of cake. What's different here?"

"He's further in than you were," Chiaotzu said. His voice was nasally and his eyes, when he raised them, were puffy. But when he wiped away his tears, no more took their place. "I don't know how to..." Chiaotzu gestured vaguely, his hand motions indicating pushing forward or brushing things aside, "get past..." He gestured again, somewhere over his head.

"Get past what?" Bulma demanded. Chiaotzu pressed his lips into a thin line, concentrating, trying to explain. But Videl had already grasped the thread of his thoughts and was gently reeling it in.

Not daring even to speak lest she break her concentration, Videl closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. Standing in the blank void that was the space between minds, Videl looked around with something that wasn't vision. There, in the distance, was a heavily fortified version of Capsule Corp.: Bulma. But that was not who she was here to find.

More voices were speaking back in the real world, but Videl tuned them out. Long ago, Gohan had taught her the basics of meditation, and she utilized that deep concentration now, diving deeper and deeper into her own mind, stretching out to find all the minds around her. She saw the ornate castles, almost identical, of Tien and Chiaotzu. The haphazard but intimidatingly dense buildings of Goten and Trunks. Piccolo's simple domed building that promised complexity within. Krillin's giant version of Kame house.

She moved past them with barely a glance. Her real prize lay so far away she felt like she had been traveling for hours, though she was aware that mere minutes, perhaps even seconds, had passed in the physical world. At last she came to it: a little capsule house with an addition and a cozy fireplace, all the doors and windows shut tight, locked, barred and waterproof. Gohan's childhood home was strangely impenetrable for such a friendly looking building.

But here was where she would test her understanding of what Chiaotzu could not seem to say: she was the only one who could get under Gohan's skin in quite the way she did. She was the one who knew him best, barring maybe Piccolo. A stranger would not know, as she did (without knowing how she knew) that there was a key hidden under the welcome mat. A little pedestrian, perhaps. But then, Videl got the sense, as she turned the key in the lock, that if anyone but her had approached, there would be no key. Possibly there would not have even been a welcome mat.

She opened the door and stepped through.


	15. Chapter 15

It didn't take Videl long to realize Gohan was stalling.

The first delay had been because Goku was off planet training. This was often the case, so there was really no reason for Videl to be suspicious, except that Gohan wouldn't even let her bring the matter up with Chi-Chi. Then once Goku returned, Gohan had been prevented by conference after office hours after tight deadlines, and of course Videl couldn't just take Pan herself, oh no, daddy needed to be there too. Except daddy conveniently never had time to go.

After three months of this Videl nonchalantly threw down the gauntlet.

"I'm taking Pan up to Mount Paozu this Sunday," she mentioned in passing as she returned some of Gohan's handkerchiefs to his office from the laundry. The way he startled in his office chair was almost funny, except she was, by now, rather cheesed with him. So cheesed that the dismay evident on his face inspired vindication rather than sympathy. She gave more attention to putting the handkerchiefs in their drawer than she needed, to keep him from seeing the triumphant upturn of the corners of her mouth. He still hadn't said anything by the time she turned to leave the room.

"Wait!"

She turned in the doorway, eyebrows raised as though she had no idea what he could possibly want. Gohan's abundant muscles were bunched with tension under his white button up, straining the fabric ever so slightly. She settled herself, waited. Eventually he scratched the side of his head with his pen sheepishly.

"I, um, have to work this Sunday, remember?" he said. She smiled brightly.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? I talked to Professor Aivee and he agreed you deserve a day off. Now we can all go."

Well and truly trapped, the only way Gohan could go now was forward.

"Actually, I've been thinking," he said, putting the pen down carefully on the desk. Straightening it so it was in line with the edge of his laptop. Correcting and over-correcting its position three or four times before continuing. "I think... maybe this is too soon."

There it was. Videl turned away from the door and faced him squarely.

"What's too soon?"

Gohan opened his mouth, drew in breath. Exhaled. He picked up a paperweight from the desk and began toying with it rather than look at her.

"She's only two and a half." His voice was almost a whisper.

Videl knew, she _knew_ , what he was getting at, but he had had _three months_ to bring this up and he hadn't.

"She's almost three," she said pointedly. "That's how old I was when I started learning."

"She still has _accidents_ , Videl. She's just a baby."

"She's not a baby, she's a toddler, and she is slowly destroying this house around my ears."

"That's just how Saiyans are. Goten nearly demolished the house several times before he was her age."

"And Chi Chi started training him when he was how old again?"

Gohan stood abruptly and began pacing. The tendons of his neck were standing out, and as he paced he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with one hand. Videl was nearly vibrating with anger. It was one thing to have issues with his daughter learning to fight. It was quite another to act like a superpowered toddler wasn't a problem that needed solving.

"I don't want her to feel obligated," Gohan said eventually. _Like you did?_ Videl did _not_ say. She wasn't _that_ mad at him. But she did say,

"And who's going to make her feel obligated? She'll always have a choice—"

"Will she?" There was an edge to Gohan's voice Videl rarely heard, and _never_ directed at her. She closed her mouth. Gohan took a deep breath, his large shoulders sliding under his shirt. "You think it will never come down to her? Her, and no one else? I know I'm being stupid, Videl, but I can't — I can't let her —" He shook his head, unwilling or unable to finish the sentence. He looked up, his impossibly black eyes willing her to understand. "I can't," he finished. "Not when she's still so young."

Part of Videl wanted to go to him, take his face in her hands and wipe away the anguish she saw there. It wasn't as though she didn't know what he was getting at. But he'd said it himself: he was being stupid, and she was sick and tired of having to replace doors and clean up splintered furniture and worry if _this_ time her dad would have to go to the hospital.

"You don't have to come on Sunday," she said, and left the room.

* * *

"No! Videl!"

Piccolo's shout jarred Krillin out of his reverie. Bulma was arguing with Tien and Chiaotzu, trying and failing to get them to speak in scientific terms about spiritual and metaphysical things, but all three of them stopped and looked up in confusion when they heard Piccolo. He was staring at Videl. Krillin followed his gaze. She was still kneeling with Gohan's head on her knees, but her eyes were closed, and it was evident, from the way her ki was behaving, that she was far away from her body.

"What happened?" Krillin asked, but Piccolo ignored him and turned an angry glare on Chiaotzu.

"You just had to give her ideas, didn't you?" he spat, earning him a returning glare from Tien.

"I beg your pardon?"

Piccolo, still sitting cross legged but no longer floating, clenched his fists.

"I've finally figured out what it is you do, Chiaotzu," he said. "Unfortunately, so has Videl."

"What do you mean?" Bulma said, bending over Videl and putting a hand on her shoulder. Videl did not react. "What happened to her?"

"She's gone in to where Gohan is," Piccolo said. He opened his mouth to continue, but Bulma held up a hand.

"Okay, stop right there. What do you mean, where Gohan is? He's right there, isn't he? Sleeping?"

Piccolo shook his head, his burst of anger already spent and melting now into worry.

"Gohan isn't sleeping any more than Videl is. He's retreated to the very center of his mind, and Videl has gone in after him."

" _What_ ," Bulma wailed in frustration, "the hell. Does that _mean_?"

Piccolo ignored her and turned back to Chiaotzu. "She's a quick learner, our Videl is. Quicker than you, I think. Do you even know what it is you do?"

"No!" Chiaotzu wailed angrily. "That's the problem!"

Piccolo nodded once, twice. "Somehow you have stumbled across the practical application of the truth that we are all connected, some of us more closely than others. With the proper amount of ki control, you can ride that connection to speak mind to mind, even absent psychic powers."

"Are you talking telepathy?" Bulma demanded, holding on for dear life to the sinking boat of her understanding. "Like what you and your dad do sometimes?" She pointed at Trunks. Trunks rolled his eyes.

"No, mom," he said. "I think he's talking about something else."

"If you know how Chiaotzu does what he does, then tell us," Tien said. "We'll have a better chance of waking them up if we all know how."

But Piccolo shook his head. "This is not as simple as learning a new technique. The mind is a complicated and fragile thing, but it also has fortifications. Videl was able to slip inside because she and Gohan are close, and it's also likely she won't do much damage for the same reason. But Zema has somehow made them retreat totally behind those fortifications, and anyone who isn't as close to them as Videl is to Gohan will be seen as a threat."

Krillin, with a feeling like a lightning bolt had struck his spine, looked down at his wife lying peacefully on the ground. If he could reach her himself...

Bulma interrupted his train of thought. "Okay, fine, I still don't know what the hell you guys are talking about, but if this thing is so hard and complicated, how did Videl figure out how to do it?"

Piccolo looked at Tien. "She used your image training as a base, and figured it out from there. I knew she was clever, but there's something to be said for not knowing what your limits are. She had no idea that those mind castles you two use in your visualization were only supposed to be metaphors."

Tien's mouth opened slightly. "But they _are_ only metaphors."

Piccolo smirked. "If a building has a door, why not go through it?"

Tien's shock turned to confusion and horror. "You mean she's gone... _inside_? Of someone that much more powerful than her?"

"That's what I'm saying," Piccolo said, his tone suddenly turning dark. "When someone invites you in willingly, the power difference doesn't matter. But if she triggers his defenses while she's in there, I don't even want to think about what might happen."

Image training... Krillin closed his eyes. He knew vaguely that the Crane School used visualizations in a very different way than the Turtle School, but he was certain he could make this work. As he concentrated, the conversation continued, the voices gradually growing fainter and more distant.

"But that's not likely to happen, is it? It's Videl. It's _Gohan_. She'll be fine, won't she?"

Was he even going to be able to find Eighteen this way? Her ki didn't glow the way normal humans' did. But she still had a mind, and she did still use ki. This would work. It had to.

"I don't know... They did have a fight the morning this all started."

Krillin felt around him, ignoring all the big, powerful ki signatures that nearly blinded him when he looked at them this way. Eighteen would be among them, but not visible. He ignored the pictures his mind was showing him and _felt_.

"Videl and Gohan had a _fight_?"

There... A faint metallic buzz that felt a lot like putting his ear to Eighteen's chest and listening to her heartbeat.

"I still don't understand what you're saying. What does a little marital discord have to do with any of this?"

It wasn't a building. The idea of imagining a person's mind as a building seemed silly to Krillin. But he had the sense of a place that was _here_ , and then in front of him a place that was somewhere _else_ , and the somewhere else was where Eighteen was. No... it _was_ Eighteen.

"When you're angry with someone, you want to shut them out, right? You slam doors, you give them the silent treatment. It hurts, but you can live with it. But Gohan is so much stronger than Videl that if he does that to her while she's _inside_ his defenses, he could easily kill her without meaning to."

Krillin smiled, and, without a second thought, faced the invisible threshold and crossed it.

* * *

_A suffocating sensation, like being swarmed by dozens of cats, all with thick, soft fur. Krillin breast-stroked frantically, trying to push his way above the softness. He finally breached the surface and found himself floating in a sea of stuffed animals._

_In his confusion he lay still, and as he glanced around he realized he knew these individuals: there was Carrot-san, complete with one of his green fronds torn almost all the way off by an enthusiastic (and teething) Marron. To his right was the big whale he had won at a carnival, and farther towards the horizon was the hideous teddy bear Eighteen had made in one of her infrequent attempts at domesticity. Someone's whiskers tickled his nose and he sneezed, the force of the sneeze flinging him backwards some yards, as though it were actually water he was suspended in instead of the high school reunion of all of Marron's toys._

_His back hit something solid, and he turned and hauled himself up out of the pit. He was standing on a harbor, much like the one they had habitually landed on during every trip to town back when they lived at Kame House. The sea of stuffed animals still drifted and bobbed with the waves of his departure, but further inland, down a gently winding path lined with hibiscus and lavender, was a house. His house._

_With one last confused glance at the stuffed animals he padded up the path, and this was how he discovered he was wearing shorts and loose sandals. Appropriate for the balmy weather, but nothing he owned, and certainly not what he'd been wearing. Krillin attempted to change back, aware that he was dreaming and expecting to be able to control the dream. But instead the sky echoed with a crack of thunder and the stuffed animals murmured unhappily. He shivered and hurried up the path._

_The house looked exactly as it did in real life, except instead of a sidewalk and a small garden there were flowering bushes all around the front entrance and a vast grassy field with a swingset in the backyard. The differences were innocuous enough, but it still made him uneasy. If this was a metaphor, what did it mean? Did Eighteen secretly want to live in the country? She'd been adamant about living near a good school for Marron and enjoyed being convenient to the nearby shopping district. Was he overthinking this? Setting his shoulders, Krillin pushed open the door._

_The inside looked nothing like their house, but it had very pleasing architecture and was expertly decorated, with big vases full of flowers lining the walls and a grand staircase leading invitingly upstairs. However, where there should have been rooms adjoining the front entrance, there was nothing. Just a door leading straight to a staircase._

_Krillin began to feel a foreboding. This place was too pleasant. Eighteen was a wonderful woman, and she had overcome a lot of her anger and guilt and regret, but she had darkness and tragedy in her past, and there was no way the inside of her mind would be a saccharine pleasure house. The lights dimmed as he thought this, shadows deepening. Grimly he took the stairs one at a time, still trying to get his clothes to change to his fighting gi._

_At the top of the stairs was a long hallway with a door at the end of it. He could feel his wife in there, just behind that door, but something was wrong. His progress down the long hall was absurdly slow, his way hindered by an unknown force. Somehow his legs were heavy, requiring him to exert all his strength just to move them. His loose linen button-up and sandals finally gave way to his fighting gi and boots, and he shot forward, slamming through the door with an explosion of splinters and a squeal of hinges._

_The bedroom was as bland and pleasant as any resort hotel room would be, with a low, king-sized bed in the middle of it. Lying seductively in the middle of the bed, wearing a bikini with tiny blue and green flowers on it, was his wife. But it wasn't his wife. Not at all._

_Krillin felt his breath grow solid and try to crawl its way out of his lungs._

" _Hey, handsome," Cell said, caressing the smooth sheets invitingly. "I've been waiting for you."_


	16. Chapter 16

A long time ago, Rin had told Goten, Ophidia had been a fully populated planet, home to almost 2 billion people. There had been war then, different groups of reptilian people killing each other for no other reason than that they were different. Then the Empire began, and though it took much bloodshed, eventually all the tribes united and peace reigned on Ophidia for centuries. The Imperial family was regarded as gods, personally overseeing the well-being of their people. Primitive Ophidians had constructed temples in honor of these gods who walked in flesh, and there were some old folks who still prayed to the Emperor rather than sending him formal petitions.

When Frieza came, enslaving them and sending away most of their population to either fight in his army or work as slaves, most of the culture of Old Ophidia collapsed. Cities were destroyed, entire provinces decimated, and by the time Frieza was vanquished by the legendary Super Saiyan, there were so few people left on Ophidia that Emperor Zema gathered them all to the Imperial City which, at 100,000 people, was more populated than it had been in decades.

The place they were hiding out, in the middle of a desert nearly on the other side of the planet, had to be one of those old temples, Goten decided. It was a huge building of stone and wood, odd in such a vast, sandy desert, with stylized depictions of Ophidians in bas relief sculpture covering nearly every surface. There were generous openings near the ceiling to let in light and air, but over the centuries they had also let in sand and wind, and the sculptures were almost completely worn away.

The sleepers and Bulma's temporary workshop were set up on a dais at the head of the building, next to what might have been a throne or altar. Buu had draped himself over it for a nap. The back wall and part of the ceiling had collapsed, making that part of the main chamber feel like a cave rather than something man-made. Goten sat on that pile of rubble, as far away from everyone else as he could get, and hugged his knees.

When Krillin had slipped into a trance, leaving them down another fighter, Bulma had put a moratorium on anyone else attempting to go mind walking, despite Goten and Trunks' vocal willingness to try. As the minutes had slipped by with no change, Bulma had begun making provisions for getting them home on her own.

Her first order of business had been to check the psychic tracker, if out of nothing else than a sense of paranoia, and she found that Zema had not been the only psychic on Ophidia. The bright white dots on the screen were not even one tenth as powerful as Zema had been, but they were ranging over the planet in a search pattern, so her next act had been to combine all the headbands into a giant Faraday cage that covered the entire building. They were still able to communicate with each other, but they were totally hidden from the outside.

After that she'd gotten down to the business of trying to make a radio strong enough to contact Earth.

At first Goten had stayed nearby, hovering over Videl and watching for any sign of movement. Tien and Bulma discussed strategy, which got more complicated when they found the Ophidians were radio jamming the entire planet. Chiaotzu and Piccolo sat next to each other, apparently meditating, although occasionally they murmured to each other, words too low to make out. Buu slept. Trunks hovered over Bulma's workstation in the same way Goten was hovering over Videl and Gohan, needing to be nearby but having nothing useful to do.

When a whole hour had passed and still Videl had not stirred a muscle, Goten gently took her body and laid it out on the floor, folding up her discarded jacket as a pillow. He figured that would be more comfortable than waking up to pins and needles from kneeling for so long. He did the same for Krillin, and then quietly took himself to the other side of the building. Everyone was still in sight, but he didn't have to listen to them worry.

It was from this new perspective that he noticed something about Trunks. His energy was a flickering candle that routinely blazed up into a raging bonfire, quickly suppressed but still white-hot. At first he was able to settle himself on his own, but soon Tien had to step in, his placid, waterlike energy reaching out to soothe while his mouth moved in what were probably equally soothing words.

Trunks kept pacing, walking up and down the line of sleeping bodies, stopping over his father often and staring down at him. Goten couldn't see his face at this distance, but the feel of his energy told him what expression it was: stricken, wide-eyed, helpless. Soon Tien disengaged from Bulma entirely and stood next to Trunks, encouraging him to relax, but Goten knew that wasn't right. Whether they were still friends or not, Goten knew Trunks better than anyone, and he knew perfectly well that what Trunks needed right now wasn't calm. What he needed was the same thing Goten did.

He needed to punch someone.

Goten hopped down off the fallen ceiling beam and walked sedately to the center of the large building, the crunch of his boots on the sand and cracked paving stones echoing off the ruined statuary that lined the walls. When he was within earshot of Trunks he pulled the headdress and outer robe of his Ophidian outfit off and flung them away, leaving him in baggy red trousers and a tan tank top. "Trunks!" he called, and when Trunks was looking at him, he crouched, bringing his hands up in a ready stance.

For a few seconds all Trunks did was blink at him. Then his expression changed, and the look it melted into was pure relief. "Oh, hell yeah."

Leaping into the air, he landed behind Goten on the other side of the expansive building. He pulled off his own overcoat and head kerchief, shaking out his hair. Then he locked eyes with Goten, crouched into his own ready stance, and grinned wickedly.

"Ready when you are," he taunted. Goten flew towards him.

Goten couldn't remember the last time he'd sparred with Trunks. Not that this was sparring. Normally when they fought it was little more than play fighting, occasionally testing out new moves or techniques on each other. Even when they went all out, they both instinctively understood that the object was to enjoy themselves.

This time, when Trunks brought his arms up in a block, Goten's fist blew past it and nailed him right in the chest, knocking him back several feet. The grin slipped from Trunks' face as he crouched, replaced first with surprise, and then with a grim determination. Good. Goten shot forward again, aiming for his face. What Goten needed right now wasn't playtime, and it wasn't what Trunks needed either.

Trunks' block this time was hard, knocking Goten's punch away and following it with an elbow strike. Goten moved his head just enough that the elbow glanced off his cheekbone, taking some of the force, but the blow still caught him hard enough in the nose that it hurt like hell.

Gritting his teeth, Goten slipped inside Trunks' guard and shot up with a palm strike, catching Trunks under his chin. There was a loud clack — probably his teeth coming together. Trunks flew upwards and backwards, curled in on himself at the apex of his trajectory, and landed neatly on his feet. His face was murderous and he had a hand on his cheek. His jaw worked and he turned and spat out a big wad of blood, all without taking his eyes from Goten.

This time Trunks shot forward, fist cocked back for a big haymaker of a blow. It was sloppy, but Trunks was just as fast as Goten, and Goten was barely able to get his guard up in time. The blow hit his forearms so hard they tingled. Trunks followed it up with a spinning roundhouse kick that caught Goten in the neck, flinging him across the building.

From back at the dais Goten could dimly hear warning yells — the grown-ups objecting. He ignored them. Trunks was on him again, a flurry of punches to his head. Goten blocked about half of them and then ducked, tackling Trunks by the waist and bringing them both to the ground. He was aware that his nose was bleeding in the same way he was aware he was sweating: a fact acknowledged and ignored.

For nearly ten minutes they grappled, occasionally getting to their feet and trading punches before one of them dragged the other to the ground again. They had never fought like this before— in an enclosed space, suppressing their energy, concentrating all of it into hard, devastating blows meant purely to inflict pain — but there was something darkly satisfying about it. All of Goten's helplessness, everything he could not say, everything he didn't know how to say, all of it went into each and every punch, and he knew Trunks was responding in kind.

Eventually the fight petered out, neither of them physically tired but both of them exhausted even so. They lay on the floor gasping, Trunks having gotten in one last gut shot before they fell apart. Goten pulled the hem of his shirt up to wipe the blood from his upper lip, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Trunks massaging his ribs where Goten had gotten in a particularly hard hit a few minutes ago. Both of them had massive black eyes, and their clothes were dirty and torn. But aside from being desperate for a drink of water and a shower, Goten felt at peace in a way he hadn't for a long time.

He rolled his head over in the dirt until he could look at Trunks, and Trunks rolled his head to look back at him. He looked subdued, resigned. Almost sad. Goten realized that Trunks was drowning, had been drowning for a long time, and he, Goten, had done nothing but sit and watch.

"We need to get them back," he said, and at first Trunks just blinked at him. Then he took a deep breath, wincing as it pushed on his bruised ribs, and nodded. Goten got painfully to his feet and offered Trunks his hand. Trunks took it with a grin.

"You know how?" he asked once he was standing. Goten returned his grin.

"Nope. You?"

Trunks shook his head, still grinning. "Not a clue."

"Then it's a good thing you have us to teach you," Piccolo said. They both jumped and turned, and found him and Tien standing behind them. Both of them looked amused.

"I'm glad you've settled your differences," Tien said. "And I agree. Trunks, you're the only one who's going to be able to reach Vegeta. But you need to get your mother's permission before we teach you how."

Trunks suddenly looked nervous. Goten stood up straighter. He glanced between Tien and Piccolo hopefully.

"And me? Do you think I can get my dad back?"

The two of them glanced at each other. It was Piccolo who finally spoke.

"Truthfully Goten, I'm not sure. Goku is a puzzle I've never been able to figure out. I suppose if anyone can, it's one of his sons. But I'll be honest with you: I would feel a lot better if it were Gohan."

It felt like all the air was leaking out of his lungs. Goten felt Trunks put a hand on his shoulder and he tried to breathe. Piccolo went on.

"But we're running out of time. Eventually those patrols are going to figure out where we are, and we have no interest in fighting an entire army. They've taken precautions to prevent us from stealing a ship, so even if we wanted to engage them it wouldn't make a difference. The only way we're getting off this planet is if Goku uses his instant transmission, and we have no idea when Gohan is going to wake up."

He glanced over at Gohan's sleeping body for a moment before turning back to Goten, peering at him like he was looking through every layer of his soul.

"Tien and I have decided it's worth the risk. But that means nothing since it's the two of you who will be bearing that risk."

"Of course we will!" Trunks said, but Tien shook his head.

"We will wait for you to make that decision until you've learned what the risks are. Trunks, I'll help you try to convince your mother."

"What about me?" Goten asked. "You're not making me get my mom's permission, are you?"

Piccolo made an expression that was something like an amused grimace. "Your mother isn't here, Goten." In an almost inaudible mutter he added, "Thank goodness."

When they reached the dais Bulma insisted that Buu heal them before she would even listen to them. Buu didn't move from where he was drowsing, just raised a hand and pointed at them. Goten sneezed when he felt his nose knit itself back together.

Once they were healed, but before Bulma could start in on Trunks, Piccolo led Goten away to the empty space in the middle of the building where he and Trunks had been fighting. He sat down cross legged and Goten did the same. Piccolo cupped his hands together in front of him like he was meditating but did not close his eyes.

"Goten," he said, and Goten was surprised to hear sadness in his voice. "I know you are not the irresponsible little boy you were the last time I was your teacher, but still, I do not think you're ready for this."

Goten felt a flare of indignation. "But you're going to teach me anyway?"

Piccolo sighed. "Like I said, we don't have time. But yes, I would rather it be Gohan. Not only is he older and more experienced, but he's had more time with Goku than you have, and that matters."

Goten clenched his teeth against the sudden swell of emotion expanding like a balloon in his chest. It wasn't exactly the same thing Trunks had said back on the ship, but it hit the same old wounds just as hard.

"It _doesn't_ matter! Just because he wasn't there when I was little doesn't mean we're not close! He's my dad and he loves me and that's the only thing that matters!"

His voice echoed around the entire building, but he didn't look around to see if the others had heard. He glared at Piccolo, daring him to disagree. But Piccolo only regarded him evenly for a moment before speaking.

"Of course he loves you," he said. "And you love him. But how well do you _know_ him?"

It was a galling question. There were stories Goten hadn't heard, he knew that. There were things the grown-ups seemed determined to keep from him, things even Gohan knew. Things like the exact relationship between the person in front of him and the Demon King the entire kingdom remembered every May 9. Things like how Vegeta had come to this planet, and why.

Things like the real reason Goku had decided to stay dead instead of raising his second son.

Goten let out a frustrated breath, balled his fists where they rested on his knees, and knew he couldn't answer.

"Goten, what I am about to teach you involves a meeting of minds so intimate that, if done without permission, would constitute the greatest violation one thinking being could inflict upon another." Goten looked up into Piccolo's eyes, his anger instantly dissolving into cold fear. Piccolo's expression did not change. "If Goku even decides to let you in, which is not a guarantee, you will be seeing into the very center of him, _and_ _vice versa_. If you have any buried resentment, if you have a negative reaction to anything you see, Goku will know instantly, and his subconscious will react to it. What exactly that means I cannot predict, but I know in myself it would involve swift and total annihilation of the intruder." Goten shivered, and Piccolo's expression softened a tiny bit. "The reason I am even considering allowing you to do this is that I don't think Goku is capable of being that ruthless to someone he loves, even on an instinctual level. But there is that risk, and you need to understand that before you agree to this."

"But, Videl and..." Goten looked over at his brother and sister-in-law, not sure how to articulate the sudden terror that gripped him as he thought of Videl seeing deeply into her husband, walking defenseless amongst such raw power. He knew better than he ever had before how dangerous his brother could be. Piccolo shook his head.

"Videl didn't know what she was doing, and she did not understand the risks. I think… I think they will be alright. But we don't know when, or if, she will succeed. It's possible that one of us will have to attempt to intervene, but right now the more pressing issue is getting off this planet. Goten," Piccolo said sharply, commanding his attention. "Now that you understand what you're getting into, do you agree to try?"

Goten gulped. He remembered back to a week ago, an eternity ago, the last time he had seen his dad.

Goten had been barely awake, having padded out of his room yawning to find Goku standing in the hallway, buck naked and talking on the cell phone Bulma had given him. He had looked puzzled, standing there with one hand on his hip and the cell phone held awkwardly in the other. As Goten came up to him he said goodbye and hung up.

"Well, that was weird," he'd said, peering down at the cell phone as though it might explain itself. "Bulma wants me to come over."

"That's not weird," Goten had said, scratching his head and yawning again. "You should put some clothes on before mom wakes up or she'll yell at you."

Goku looked down at himself, seemingly unaware of his lack of clothing. "Whoops, you're right." Then he had looked back up at Goten, grinning his wide grin. "You know, kiddo, I'd be pretty lost without you."

Goten had rolled his eyes and continued on his journey down the hall to the bathroom. But in the here and now, looking at Piccolo looking at him, Goten knew it didn't matter what the risks were. He would try. He had to.

* * *

_It was a moon viewing party, but no one was looking at the moon. Videl wasn't sure what the penalty was for looking, but she carefully kept her eyes down as she wandered through the party. There were hundreds of people here, maybe thousands, all of them with their backs turned to the great glowing orb in the sky._

_Despite not looking at it, she knew it was there. It was so bright it cast sharp shadows on the grass, turned gray and silver in the moonlight. Couples and families and work parties all sat on picnic blankets scattered across the fields, each of them in turn greeting her or asking her to sit down and share a drink. She smiled and waved politely and passed them all by._

_For hours and eons and no time at all she made her way, searching, her fear making her impatient, her impatience making her angry. Eventually she stopped and rose into the air, feeling foolish that she had forgotten she could. The party stretched on for miles, more blankets coming into view as she rose ever higher. Eventually she went so high the atmosphere thinned and the air grew cold. But even from this vantage point he was still nowhere to be found._

_Frustration burned in her, and she crossed her arms over her stomach, both in angry contemplation and to get her fingers warm. Slowly the hot sun at her center suffused her fingers with warmth and they unstiffened, but by then her legs were cold, and she brought them up to her chest, wrapping her hands around them and curling her entire body around the source of the heat. It took a long time, but finally all of her was warm except her back, but there was nothing she could do about that. Her back was facing the moon._

_The moon._

_The world held its breath as she thought about the moon. It was cold like winter on her back, and for the first time she wondered why she wasn't supposed to look. Ever so slightly she turned her head, trying to catch a glimpse of silver out of the corner of her eye, but the light caught in her eyelashes, and she knew she wouldn't be able to see anything unless she committed, turned fully around and opened her eyes wide._

_Well. She was never one to back down from a challenge._

_Videl straightened her body and turned slowly around in midair, keeping her eyes closed until she saw the glow of light through her eyelids. She took a deep breath and opened them._

_The moon was huge. It took up half the entire night sky, so big she could barely keep all of it in her vision. The light hit her eyes and kept going, saturating her eyeballs, filling every crack and crevice of her brain. It dripped down her esophagus and into her lungs and heart, filled her belly, kept going until it had reached the tips of her fingers and toes. It filled her body until it spilled out of her mouth and nose and ears, and as it went it unearthed and detached every scrap of hatred she had ever felt and rolled it all into a ball and made her swallow it._

_Videl choked and doubled over, gripping her esophagus, the black mass far bigger than she could swallow. She squeezed and massaged her throat, trying to coax it down, but it burned and she coughed, little black specks flying from her mouth. The gasp after the cough enlarged her throat for just long enough that it fell all the way down and hit her stomach like a rock. Nausea and literal stomach acid rolled up like a wave, but she clapped her hand over her mouth and clutched at her stomach, determined to keep it down._

_After several minutes of holding completely still, her body settled. Videl opened her eyes, tears on her eyelashes glinting like stars. The moonlight had gone out, and it was no longer cold. In fact, it was now oppressively warm, the air humid and close despite the fact that there was nothing around her. The darkness was smoky, and in the far distance flames flickered a dull red. She could see almost nothing, but there were sounds, some far, some frighteningly near. Some of the sounds were the crackling of a forest fire, others were distant screams. Beneath everything there was a rumbling so low she felt it in her bones._

_From right behind her, quiet but arresting, was the wet, sloppy sound of something very large eating._

_Fear prickled through every square inch of Videl's skin. She opened her ears wide and could hear flesh being ripped from bones, bones snapping between giant teeth, grunts and huffs coming from an unimaginably huge throat. Whatever it was seemed preoccupied at the moment, but surely it would notice her soon. Videl kept herself still, not daring to move or breathe or blink._

_The thing kept on eating. Periodically great gulping swallows would halt the enormous breath, which would then gust out a moment later, so close and so powerful it ruffled Videl's hair. Videl kept still, the breath in her lungs growing stale, then hard, then solid, so that now she couldn't breathe even if she wanted to. The lack of oxygen made her heart race and her adrenaline spike, and at once she came to herself._

_This cowering fear was befitting of a mouse, maybe, but not Videl Son-Satan. She straightened up and tightened her stomach muscles in a sharp 'ha', forcing the pent-up air from her lungs. She turned around, fists raised, ready to fight or die, but determined to do either with courage and grace. What she saw turned all her newfound bravery into leaden horror._

_It was an Oozaru._

_She had never seen one with her own eyes, but she had been told too many stories about them for comfort during the months of pregnancy before they found out if Pan had a tail. What she had imagined was nothing like this, but still she knew it instantly. It was so large it towered over her, even crouched as it was over some animal — no, Videl realized as she looked closer. It was a person, or had been. It was mere meat now, whoever or whatever it had been before. There was a flash of white tail and a cracked black insect carapace alongside flecks of something that looked like bubblegum and far, far too much black hair, all drenched and mixed together with meat and blood._

_Videl retched, and at the sound the Oozaru stopped, a handful of dripping gore held halfway to its mouth. Slowly it raised its head, and then, in a movement inhumanly fast, it turned its head to stare at her. Its eyes were flat and white, and instantly fixed on her. There was a breathless half second where neither of them moved, and then the Oozaru roared, raising its mouth to the sky and letting loose a howl of pure rage._

_Then it lowered its head, stared straight at her, and charged._


	17. Chapter 17

Chiaotzu and Tien sat next to each other, meditating, keeping as much of an eye on things as they could. Piccolo sat near Videl and Gohan, doing the same. Of the fourteen people here, only five were still awake. Four, if you didn't count Buu, who was snoring gently but (hopefully) still able to be awakened. Chiaotzu was no stranger to creepy, but even he found the experience of being surrounded by more than half a dozen comatose bodies unsettling.

Trunks had ultimately won the argument with his mother, and he’d picked up the mind walking technique almost effortlessly, as had Goten. Curious to see where he’d failed with Goku, Chiaotzu had tried to follow Goten's progress, but he found the experience of trying to watch someone else go mind walking murky and difficult to visualize. All he could tell was that Goten was having more success than he had.

Bulma had been difficult to convince, and not, she had eventually informed Trunks through tears, simply because she finally understood the dangers of walking in another person’s mind. It was impossible to know what you might see, looking through someone's psyche so intimately. It was different than simply reading memories, so Trunks might be spared some of the horrors from Vegeta's past, horrors many of the people here had witnessed firsthand. But he also might see worse things than visions of his father as he had been. There was simply no way to know. But there was also no one else who could free him.

In the end Bulma had given in, throwing her arms around Trunks and whispering something in his ear that made Trunks stiffen and go expressionless. Then she had turned away and begun working at her workshop again, determined to find a way to get a message through to Earth despite the radio jamming. Tien and Piccolo had found Trunks to be a willing but subdued student. Now he sat cross legged next to Goten, face placid, breathing shallow and even, same as most of the rest of the people here.

Chiaotzu had the distinct but foolish feeling that this entire situation was his fault. He knew it wasn’t, that in fact his mind-walking technique was their best and only hope for undoing what Zema had done. But this led to the even more upsetting feeling that if only he had practiced it more he might have already rescued Goku and everyone else and they could be eating dinner back home by now. It was a stupid thing to think, of course. Just imagining the kind of person he would have become filled him with revulsion and self-loathing. Especially when thinking about it reminded him that he had once been the kind of person depraved enough to come up with it in the first place.

This dark spiral of self-reflection and guilt eventually attracted Tien's attention, and he nudged Chiaotzu's mind in a silent question. Normally Chiaotzu appreciated the privacy of their mental connection, but this time he replied out loud.

"Did we do the right thing?"

Tien opened his eyes and Chiaotzu felt him search carefully for the right thing to say.

"You mean with Trunks? And Goten?"

"I mean with all of them." Chiaotzu felt his eyes get hot, but he held back the tears. He had already cried too much. "But especially with Trunks and Goten. We've put them in terrible danger, and put Goku and Vegeta in danger from them. Videl and Krillin we couldn't have stopped, but we showed Trunks and Goten the way."

Chiaotzu realized belatedly that Tien had probably been thinking the same thing this whole time, but all Tien said was, "What else could we have done?" Before Chiaotzu could argue, Tien went on, still out loud, his voice tired and heavy. "We have no way off this planet without engaging an entire military. Even if we somehow get in touch with Earth and they wish us home, we have no idea if the dragon balls can fix this. My guess is not, and then we’d be left exactly where we are now. In any case, Bulma tells me she's not sure she has the power to make a radio strong enough to break through their jamming. So it’s up to us to fix this. It's risky, but we didn't have any other choice."

Chiaotzu's only comfort was that Tien found this as unsatisfactory as he did. Tien was also feeling just as guilty, and Chiaotzu was about to bury his doubts as best he could for his friend's sake when Piccolo spoke up.

"Neither of you understand, do you?"

Both of them looked at him. His eyes were open, but he was still in the same meditative pose he had been in for hours, sitting close enough to Gohan and Videl to touch. He looked down at them now, his expression soft with fondness. Chiaotzu had always thought it strange that someone who was ostensibly a clone of the Demon King could look so different from him. Not that he wasn't grateful for it. Piccolo looked back up at them.

"You still don't understand your own technique, Chiaotzu. But then, why should you? You discovered it when you were still on the path of evil, and then, rightly, you kept from using it. So there was no way for you to have known what Videl discovered so effortlessly. Doubtless she does not even know what it is she has discovered."

"What do you mean?" Tien asked, and Chiaotzu was perhaps the only one who knew how much impatience he was concealing. Piccolo went on.

"I have been trying to discover why it is that I was the only one able to awaken myself, and it comes down to the others that reside in my mind: Kami, whom you know, and Nail, who you do not. Zema must not have known they were there, because he did not take care to restrain them as he did me. They were able to find me and pull me back out of myself. I could not have done it without their help."

"So we did need to send someone," Tien said with relief. Chiaotzu wished he could share the feeling. Piccolo answered Tien but he looked at Chiaotzu as he did so.

"We did, but more importantly we needed to send _them_. We've spent so long warning them of the dangers they're facing that we've neglected to remember why they can succeed. Kami and Nail were able to awaken me because they are a part of me and yet separate: close enough to know what to do, but distant enough not to be caught with me. It is for the same reason that Videl and the others have a chance; and more than just a chance. Regardless of the risks, we did not do wrong to trust them to each other."

Chiaotzu closed his eyes, and for the first time in both their lives he entered Tien's mind. He felt Tien startle, then smile and relax, allowing him through. The eastern-style castle was large but not ostentatious, solidly built and beautiful. Chiaotzu knew it looked a lot like his own. Carefully but steadily Chiaotzu walked up to the front gate, and then, without knowing why he did so, walked around the perimeter of the wall. It was a walk that would have taken several minutes in real time but which took him no time at all in this timeless, spaceless place. When he got to the very back of the building he found a small door, exactly his height, which opened easily at his touch.

Inside was a room Chiaotzu found as familiar as his own face, although he had never seen it before. There was the teapot, unlike the one at the dojo yet instantly recognizable; the green and yellow rug he'd never seen before right where it should be. In terms of literal space the room was small, but the feeling of it was huge. It took up most of the palace, and Chiaotzu knew, without knowing how he knew, that if someone entered through the front gate, whether by invitation or by force, they would never find their way to this room.

He turned to go, but before he did he saw a pork bun sitting by itself on a table in the corner of the room. On the top was the pattern of five sesame seeds the cooks of the Crane School used to adorn their work. It was still warm, and the steam wafting off it smelled like forgiveness. Chiaotzu felt Tien looking at him looking at the pork bun, and for once he felt embarrassed. Quickly he left the room and opened his eyes, only to find Piccolo looking at him with a small smile of satisfaction.

"Do you see now?"

Chiaotzu looked back at him solemnly. "Do you?" Piccolo raised one eyebrow. "It's not about closeness and distance, Piccolo. It's love. They'll succeed because of their love."

Piccolo's cheeks tinged purple, but Chiaotzu could also see he was not surprised. He had known, then, and just been reluctant to say it. Chiaotzu realized one more thing. "And that’s why I couldn’t succeed."

Piccolo nodded. "If this were about ki or battle training Videl would never have a chance. But all things considered I think she might have the best chance of all of them."

* * *

_As the Oozaru charged — it was amazingly fast for something so large — Videl found she was more fascinated than frightened. Seeing something so large and unnatural in action was thrilling in a sick kind of way. The way its muscles bunched under its fur, the way it knuckled the ground and yet still somehow had a familiar gait, arrested her attention and she found herself unable, and unwilling, to look away._

_It reached her and let loose another deafening roar right in her face. The roar, and the sudden stop, created a wind so powerful Videl was buffeted from the air. She landed on the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of her. She couldn't breathe, but she barely noticed as she raised her head to look at the huge jaws with enormous curved teeth hovering over her. It bent down until one of its nostrils was so close she could touch it, a cavernous space big enough for her to crawl into. It sniffed, the force of it so powerful her hair lifted up. At the apex of the sniff it stopped, the entire huge being freezing in place._

_Videl lay very still on the ground. Her wind came back and she was able to breathe, but she didn't. The Oozaru leaned back its head enough to see her. She watched it recognize her, and she recognized it in turn: Gohan. Of course. This was Gohan. The one she was looking for. The one she had come to save._

_Only… it wasn't. Her eyes roved around the creature, seeing hints of Gohan's mannerisms in the way it lashed its tail and the way it held its shoulders, but there was something… hollow about it. This was Gohan, but only part of him. She still had farther to go. She tried to stand up, but the Oozaru roared, bringing its mouth down so close to her she could have reached out and touched its teeth. But it did not touch her._

_Now that she knew this creature was Gohan her fear vanished. Even when it roared again, gnashing its teeth right above her, railing and stamping and screaming, radiating the desire to smash her flat, take her in its mouth and chew her to pieces, pierce her body with its fingers and watch her eyes drain of life — through all of it she lay there, peaceful, and did not feel afraid._

_This enraged the creature even more, and it brought its fists down on either side of Videl, cracking the ground and sending up a shockwave of earth that went for miles. Clumps of sod and rocks rained down on her, and soil landed in her mouth. She spat and sat up, scooping the dirt out with her fingers. The Oozaru hovered over her, waiting for her reaction. The taste of earth was metallic and musty in her mouth, and her legs were numb, but she looked up at the Oozaru with compassion, understanding, love — not fear. Never fear._

_For a long moment the creature stared at her, in total disbelief. Then it tilted its head, the same way Gohan did when he was having trouble figuring out a problem and had decided to try attacking it from a different angle. Again it lowered its mouth, the dripping maw gaping open in a cavern so wide Videl could have lived in it. Its teeth dug into the earth around her and brought them together with a clack as loud as thunder._

_Videl tumbled as the creature raised its head with her in its mouth, rocks and soil and saliva combining and wrapping around her to form a solid mass with her at the center. It raised its head until its snout was pointed at the sky._

_Then it swallowed._

* * *

_Goten found himself standing outside his own front door. He grinned, and ran around to the back of the house, down the little path, skipping around the boulder that jutted into it, and out to the little hut he secretly pretended belonged to him. He knew it was really dad's grandpa's house, but he had come here so often in his childhood, to play games, to cry, to daydream, that deep in his heart of hearts he knew it was his._

_He slipped his fingers into the ring on the door and pulled, but it opened onto, not a musty smelling, comfortable little room barely more than ten paces long, but a wide open space, the light blindingly bright when he had been expecting darkness. Goten squinted, throwing a hand up in front of his eyes, and waited for them to adjust._

_Directly in front of him was a small grassy area bisected by a stone path. Next to the path was a small house overshadowed by a lush tree, and parked next to the house was a car. There was something very strange about the horizon, which seemed to drop away on all sides abruptly, and the sky was pink instead of blue. There was something about this place that didn't seem quite real, even for a dream. Goten walked toward the house, but before he reached it he heard someone shout his name._

_Goten spun around, and there, jogging up to him, waving, grinning widely, was —_

_"Dad!"_

_Goten leapt from where he stood and flung his arms around his father's neck. Goku laughed, spinning them both around, but after a moment he stopped and held Goten out at arms length, his face suddenly serious._

_"Goten," he said, "something's going on, isn't it?"_

_Goten nodded, but he couldn't keep the grin from his face. Piccolo had made finding his dad sound like it was going to be difficult, even harrowing, but here he was, easy as that. Goku set him down, and as briefly as he could Goten filled him in._

_"— so I came in to find you, and, well, here you are." Even summarizing events had taken several minutes, and they had both settled down on the ground cross legged while he was talking. When he was finished Goku nodded thoughtfully and crossed his arms over his chest._

_"I see," he said, staring at nothing. "I thought something funny was going on, but I didn't even know I was dreaming until you pointed it out. This Zema guy must've been really strong. I'm disappointed I didn't get a chance to fight him, but he's dead now, right?"_

_Goten shivered and nodded. Goku quirked his mouth to the side in a brief pout, but Goten bounced impatiently._

_"That's not important, dad. How are we going to get out of here? The door I came through is gone."_

_"That's a good question, kiddo." Goku lowered his chin almost to his chest and closed his eyes, humming thoughtfully. He sat like that for a long time, and Goten began plucking up blades of grass and tossing them into the wind. He knew they weren't out of the woods yet, but it was hard to be worried when his dad was finally here, right in front of him and working on a solution. He had always come through before. Goten had no reason to think he wouldn't now._

_Trunks had been trying to hurt him when he accused Goten of being used to his dad being gone a lot, but the thing that hurt most was that it was true. Goten admired his dad, looked up to him immensely, loved him wholeheartedly. But he was not blind to his flaws._

_In the first few fragile weeks of Goku's return, when they had all been trying to figure out how to turn a family of three into a family of four, Goten had been delighted to find that, unlike Trunks' dad, his own was more like a big playmate than a disciplinarian. True, he trained just as hard as Vegeta did. But he never forced Goten to join him if Goten didn't want to, and he never tattled on him to Chi-Chi even when he broke the rules. To a seven-year-old that had been pretty much the definition of a perfect father._

_Now Goten knew better. There was a part of him that regretted it wasn’t Goku he went to for advice. His dad was just not the kind of person you could come to with a problem about school, or friendship, or, heaven forbid, puberty. He was frequently away training, always shirked his chores whenever he had the chance, and continued to act like a little kid long after Goten had stopped being one. But..._

_Goten looked up from the grass he was twisting in his fingers and watched as Goku hummed deeper and deeper the longer he went without a solution, sweat popping out along his brow. The sight was comforting, because, despite all his flaws, Goten knew one thing about his father that was more true for him than it was for anybody else: he would do anything to protect the people he loved._

_"Whew!" Goku exclaimed, letting out a noisy breath and falling back on his palms. "What a doozie! I don't even know how to start."_

_Goten fought down his sudden alarm. "What? What is it? Do you know how we get out of here?"_

_Goku stretched his legs out in front of him and knocked the toes of his boots together thoughtfully. "I'm not exactly sure what this psychic guy did to me, but it's like I'm in one of those... you know, like those twisty pieces of paper?" Goku mimed something with his hands, and huffed in annoyance when Goten only stared at him. "Like this."_

_Goku picked a long blade of grass and held it flat in front of him, stretched taut between thumb and index finger of both hands. "If you walk along this, eventually you come to the edge, right?" He shifted the blade of grass to one hand, and mimed walking along the blade with his other hand. Once it reached the edge, the finger person fell off, presumably to their doom. "But if you do this —" Goku again took the blade of grass in both hands, but this time he twisted one side a full one hundred eighty degrees and then pulled it around in a loop to join it to the end of the untwisted side. Goten's mouth dropped, and he spoke over Goku's next words._

_"When did you learn about Möbius strips?"_

_Goku grinned, dropping the blade of grass. "Bulma showed me that once. It's pretty lame origami, but I guess even geniuses can't be good at everything."_

_Normally Goten would have laughed, but he was too busy thinking about the hopelessness of their situation._

_"Then how do we get out?"_

_Goku cocked his head, studying Goten. "Well,_ **_you_ ** _probably still can, but I'm pretty much stuck. Unless…"_

_Swiftly Goku tucked his legs back under him and brought his hands together, closing his eyes. Goten held his breath as his father meditated, warring between fear and hope. Surely they weren't_ **_stuck_ ** _stuck. Surely his dad would figure out the trick and then they could go home and this nightmare would be over. Surely…_

_Goku grunted, and all at once there was a deep sucking sensation like the vortex of a whirlpool. Everything around Goten shrank to a single point and then disappeared, including Goku._

_Panicking, Goten tried to jump to his feet, but there was no ground to jump up from. He tried flying, but there was no sense of direction, no up or down, back or forward. There was nothing. No little house, no green grass, no sky, no air. No dad. Goten twisted frantically around, trying to find something to look at, anything in this awful nothingness, but it was no use. He was completely and utterly alone._


	18. Chapter 18

_To Trunks it felt like walking through nothingness for a long time. Then, after an age or so, he saw a large shape in the distance. Coming closer, he found it was a smooth wall blocking his path. It wasn't until he was almost right on top of it that he saw the nearly invisible seam running down the middle: not a wall, then, but a set of doors. Doors with no handles, knockers or peepholes._

_Trunks, unafraid of seemingly impenetrable things, stepped right up to the doors and pushed. They budged not an inch. He punched them, powered up to Super Saiyan and punched them again, tried to wedge his fingers inside the seam, screamed in frustration. Nothing._

_Sighing, Trunks stepped back from the doors and noticed something that he swore hadn't been there before. At about shoulder height, a few feet away from him, were three indentations — handprints, two roughly the same size and one only a few inches across. Trunks felt something solidify in his throat as he raised his hand and pressed it into the biggest indentation. His hand fit perfectly, down to the tiniest creases in his palm._

_Something clicked and the doors swung open on silent hinges, leaving Trunks with his hand in the air. For a long moment he stood there, fighting down the lump in his throat. Then with a laugh tinged with something like relief, Trunks stepped inside._

* * *

_There were so many questions about his father no one would answer. Even simple ones, like 'why did you come to earth?' got glided over as though the truth was too terrible to speak out loud. The holes in his knowledge about Vegeta were many and vast, but together they formed an outline of horror Trunks didn't need or want filled in. His father was his father, and nothing else about him mattered._

_But he wasn't stupid. He knew he was probably about to see something that might fill in those holes. Bulma had whispered to him before he left: "Please don't hate him, Trunks," and all over again he was reminded that his father had skeletons in his closet the size of dragons. Almost certainly what he was about to see would change his relationship with his father forever._

_So he was understandably confused when he found himself in the middle of an Earth hospital._

_Nurses in blue scrubs rushed past him, someone on the intercom called for Dr. Payne to report to Surgery Room 1, and an eldery man shuffled along the wall, wheeling an IV drip behind him. Trunks stood in the middle of this chaos of activity in his Ophidian robes for several long minutes, trying to understand what he was seeing._

_Tien had told him that the mind knew no time, so he would likely see things from Vegeta's childhood and early adulthood. And, yes, some of the doctors were aliens and some of the nurses wore armor like his father's. But he was clearly on Earth. Bewildered, Trunks began walking forward, dodging interns and hugging the wall to let stretchers pushed by urgent doctors go by._

_He reached the first intersection, and one of the nurses put a gentle hand on his arm and pointed down the left hallway. He looked at her in surprise, but he didn't recognize the black-haired woman. She smiled, and something about her expression tickled his memory, but she was gone before he could place it. He went down the left hallway._

_At the next intersection an arrow pointed right, and at the next, a doctor engrossed in his patient notes jabbed his thumb behind him for Trunks to go straight. Every step of the way there was someone or something to guide him, until at last Trunks arrived at a hospital room. He knew it was the right one because Scratch the cat was there, meowing pitifully to be let in. Trunks felt his heart hammer as he pulled the latch and opened the door._

_Inside sat his father, head in hands, facing three hospital beds where lay his mother, his little sister, and himself. All three of them were bruised and battered beyond recognition, and their heart monitors beeped weakly. Trunks could tell they were close to death. His father's fingers were white where they gripped his hair, and he did not move when Trunks entered. Trunks caught the briefest impression of tears._

_Zema had locked the sleepers away in their own minds, made them curl up in on themselves so tightly they couldn't break free. Tien and Piccolo couldn't guess what Trunks might see, but they had both thought it likely that Vegeta would be reliving his worst memories or enacting his worst fears. They had exchanged subtle but meaningful glances as they said this._

_Trunks blinked back tears. They'd been right._

* * *

_The infernal beeping was going to haunt his nightmares for years. Vegeta had finally been ushered into the hospital room where his family lay, comatose and bruised beyond recognition. He had sunk down into the first chair he found and sat there, stunned, for the last several... hours? Days? It felt like years._

_His fault. All his fault. He hadn't been strong enough, hadn't been fast enough. Hadn't been_ _**enough**_ _. And now they were close to death. What was he going to do if they died? What would he be, without them?_

_If only. If only he had seen the signs sooner, dodged left instead of right, been just a little quicker. If only._

_What would he be? He was nothing. He had given up everything he was. The person he was had died, and this new thing he had become meant_ _ **nothing**_ _if they weren't there to anchor himself to._

_What would he be if they died?_

_The door opened and someone shuffled in. Vegeta didn't look up. His head was buried in his hands and he knew if he moved it would break the tenuous hold on life they still had. If he just stayed here, kept still, they could recover. It wasn't much of a chance, but it was the only one he could give them. The person sat down on the chair next to him, shifted uncomfortably, coughed. Vegeta ignored them._

" _Um..."_

_It was a familiar voice. Someone he knew, come to try and comfort him. He didn't deserve comfort. He abhorred the idea of company when he was suffering. But he didn't move._

" _Dad?"_

_...dad?_

_Not moving, Vegeta reached out with his energy and found Trunks, well and whole, sitting next to him. Trunks was here. How was Trunks here? Trunks was on death's door in the bed across the room. When he felt in that direction, though, he found nothing. Stretching out wildly as far as he could, panic rising in him like a storm, he found no one at all. No one in the immediate vicinity but himself and this uninjured Trunks sitting next to him. Slowly, Vegeta raised his head._

_He saw nothing. No hospital, no injured family, nothing. He looked to his right and found Trunks, looking hesitant, almost afraid, but also, and far more importantly, well. Undamaged. Alert and awake and_ _**alive** _ _. Vegeta felt the breath catch in his throat._

" _What...?"_

" _Dad, we—" Trunks' voice broke. He looked like he was about to cry. Shaking himself, he cleared his throat. "We need to get out of here."_

_"Where...?" Vegeta looked around wildly, but still there was nothing. He turned back to Trunks, who was looking at him with the same tentative hopeful despair Vegeta had been feeling himself until mere seconds ago. "Bulma? Bulla? You...?"_

" _It's a long story," Trunks said, holding out his hand. Vegeta gripped his wrist, holding so tight Trunks winced. He didn't let go. Trunks didn't ask him to._

" _You're a good son, Trunks," he said, because even though he still didn't know what was going on, and even though such things could only be said so many times, they could still stand to be said more often. Trunks swallowed, and led Vegeta away._

* * *

_Goten didn't know how long he'd been here, curled up on himself, crying his eyes out. His tears were slowly floating away from his eyes like bubbles underwater, and he'd been crying for so long the trail stretched farther than he could see. He tried to tell himself that his dad would come for him, that if he stayed where he was and waited, eventually he would be rescued. But it was getting harder and harder to believe that._

_Finally, when it felt like there was no more water left in his body, Goten decided to stop crying and try to figure a way out. He wasn't a little kid that needed his daddy to come save him, even if that was the only thing in the world he wanted. His dad was trapped just as much as he was, and he had, after all, come in here to rescue him. He wiped his eyes on his shirt and gave one last sniff, but then he heard something._

_Holding his breath he listened as hard as he could. Gradually he realized that the noise, rhythmic and airy, was breathing. Hope climbing its way up his throat, Goten looked in every direction, and finally realized that the sound was coming from along the pearly path of his tears. He peered into the distance and saw his dad, laboriously making his way from teardrop to teardrop, following them like breadcrumbs. Frantically Goten flailed his arms and legs, trying to swim through the void, but he made very little progress by the time Goku reached him. He clung to his dad like a limpet, relieved that Goku was holding him just as tightly back._

_"Well, that didn't work," his dad said with a laugh._

" _What happened?" Goten demanded. Goku shifted him to one arm and pulled back just enough that they could see each other's faces._

" _It looks like the harder I try to get out, the more stuck I get. Once I get out of here I'm going to have to ask Whis if he can start training my mind, because I've never seen anything like this. You should probably go back so you don't get hurt while I try to figure it out."_

_Goku made to release him, but Goten clung even tighter, still feeling like he was three again and not caring._

" _No! I came here to help you." He put his hands on either side of his dad's face and brought their foreheads together, pressing hard so Goku would know he meant what he said. "So let me help."_

_Goku put his own hands on Goten's head, pressing back even harder. Goten felt warm where his dad's hands were blocking out the icy void around them. They stayed like that for a while, Goten drawing comfort and calmness from his father's presence. Eventually Goku nodded, blowing out a noisy, decisive breath._

" _Goten, you're right." He pulled back and looked Goten in the eye solemnly. "You know I hate asking for help, but we don't have time for me to figure this out on my own. I need you to help me, but it might be dangerous. Are you up for it?"_

_Goten nodded. "Piccolo already warned me."_

_Goku raised an eyebrow. "He did, huh? Well, good. Because I've never done anything like this before. Let me know if anything I do hurts, okay?"_

_He went cross legged and folded his arms over his chest again, floating in midair. Goten assumed a similar position in front of him, praying that this time he wouldn't be sucked into an inky void again. As Goku concentrated they began to move — or the void around them moved — or their new location moved to them. Whichever it was, Goten now found himself sitting on the solid floor of the Lookout, watching Goku sweat and concentrate. He didn't feel anything happening, but after a few minutes Goku opened his eyes and looked at him, puzzled._

_"Goten, are you mad at me?"_

_Goten blinked, nonplussed. He wasn't mad at his dad. He wasn't sure he'd ever been mad at his dad in his whole life. "No, of course not. Why?"_

_Goku grimaced as he attempted to explain. "I've been trying to sync with your energy, or — not like your ki energy, but your mind? You know? Since you're still connected to the outside world — I think — I thought maybe I could get out that way. But you're blocking me."_

_A slow curl of fear wound around Goten's stomach. "I am?"_

_Goku shook his head like he was trying to dislodge a bug. "Not consciously. I'm not sure you're actually_ _**doing** __anything, exactly. It's more like… There's a blockage? And I think it's got something to do with me."_

_"I'm not blocking you!" Goten cried. "There's not — there's nothing — what are you even talking about?"_

_Goku scooted forward on his butt a few inches. "Here, let me show you —" And he put his hands on Goten's shoulders._

_Three years old. Realizing that if Trunks has a dad, then he must have one too._

_Four years old. Finding a dead squirrel in the yard and finally understanding what the shrine with his daddy's picture meant._

_Five years old. The anniversary. Catching Gohan crouching in front of the shrine, sobbing so bitterly it sounds like it hurts._

_Seven years old. Peering out from behind his mom's leg. Realizing what people mean when they tell him he looks exactly like his dad._

_Eight years old. Asking his dad again why he stayed dead. Being told, again, the same answer he had heard over and over since he was three years old. Thinking, for the first time, of another question. Taking in breath with which to ask it. Looking at dad, smiling broadly, head cocked to the side, cheerful and oblivious._

_Exhaling._

_Goten wrenched away from his dad and jumped backward out of arm's reach. He was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating. Goku put his hands down slowly, looking regretful._

_"Sorry, buddy, I could've been more careful with that. But I think in order to get out we need to be completely open to each other, at least for a moment, and that's what's blocking me. I… stayed dead? Is that what it is?"_

_Goten felt himself crying. He swept the tears away and more came, and more, until they flowed like a river instead of individual, delicate bubbles. The Lookout began to flood, the water level rising until it was up to his ankles. Goku stood to keep from getting soaked, looking concerned but not moving any closer. The unasked question sat on Goten's chest like a weight until he could barely breathe. It wasn't a complicated question: yes or no. But in his entire life Goten had never figured out which answer was the one he wanted._

_Hands still pressed over his eyes in a futile attempt to stop the rising water, Goten asked,_

_"Did you know about me? When you decided to stay dead? Did you know I existed?"_

_"I don't understand what that has to —"_

_The weight exploded into Super Saiyan. The heat of his transformation blew the water away and turned the residue into steam. Goten clenched his fists by his sides._

_"Did you_ _**know** _ _?"_

_He opened his eyes and looked at his dad, still standing there with his brow furrowed. After a moment Goku spoke._

_"No, I didn't know. I didn't know about you until I came back to earth for the tournament."_

_The weight changed, but it didn't go away. The heat cooled slightly, allowing the tears to start back up, but less now. Was that a better answer than yes? He had only been leaving one son behind, not two?_

_"Would you have stayed? If you knew?" Goten was looking at the floor, so he didn't see his dad's face when he answered. But his voice was solemn._

_"Probably not. At the time I thought it was the best way to protect everybody."_

_It was the same old answer, understandable but infuriating. Noble but selfish. Goten scrubbed at his eyes, determined to bottle this away too. He had asked the question, removed the blockage. Surely they could go home now. But Goku went on._

_"But if I had known, I would've been glad." Goten peeked over his arm to find his dad smiling gently at him. "Chi-Chi loves babies, and I knew she would be lonely without me. So I would have been glad to know she had someone else to take care of while I was gone. I bet it made her real happy, raising you. It makes me happy too."_

_Goku grinned. Goten sniffed. It wasn't the kind of thing Vegeta would say, though that was probably a good thing. It wasn't the kind of thing Krillin said to Marron, and it was not the kind of thing Gohan would ever say to Pan. But, Goten thought as his face crumpled into a watery smile and he fell out of Super Saiyan, none of those people were_ _**his** __dad._

_"Hey, it's gone!" Before Goten could even fully comprehend the words there was another sucking sensation, the feeling of the entire world moving — only this time the world wasn't bleeding away, leaving him alone. This time Goku was with him, moving upwards, and even though he wasn't really, to Goten it felt like his dad was holding his hand the entire way._


	19. Chapter 19

_Videl could remember the moment when she realized everyone expected her and Gohan to get married like it was yesterday. It was different than the teasing they got after Majin Buu, when the group had realized the two of them were close: Krillin yanking Gohan's head down so he could give him a noogie, Bulma winking and reminding them to use condoms. That had been bad enough, but it had also died down pretty quickly. It wasn't until a year or two after that, chatting with Bulma one afternoon, that she realized Chi-Chi wasn't the only one who assumed they would get married someday._

_Being…_ _**herself** _ _, she had initially fought the idea. Oh, she loved Gohan, and if she'd been honest with herself she would've admitted she was assuming the same thing. But Videl Satan did not do things simply because other people assumed she would, and furthermore the very idea of marriage was terrifying, so she had begun to be cold to Gohan as a way of soothing her nerves. In the back of her mind she knew she would warm up to him again after a while, once the proper amount of punishment had been served (though who she was punishing, and why, she could not have said). But, not for the first time, and certainly not the last, she had underestimated Gohan._

_In a manner unique to him, somehow both soft and stern, he informed her that giving him the cold shoulder was not appreciated, but that he would be happy to listen to her if he had done something wrong. Ironically, that had been the moment she knew she_ _ **was**_ _going to marry him, and it sparked a very long, emotionally harrowing conversation in which she had finally opened up to him about her parents' divorce, where the chip on her shoulder had come from exactly, and many, many other things._

_Gohan sat patiently and listened to it all. When she was done, Gohan still rubbing her back, he had offered, if she felt it would be fair, to share something personal with her. Fairness, at that point, hadn't come into it: she was the one who had been a jerk to him, after all. But finally hearing something personal about Gohan after years of dating had been an offer she couldn't pass up._

_And so, in a cramped study room on the basement floor of the college campus they both attended, she heard, for the first and last time, the true story of the Cell Games._

_He had, of course, given her_ _ **a**_ _story much earlier. She had hardly stopped pestering him about it from the moment she learned her father hadn't truly beaten Cell. And that story had been true, in that all the facts were accurate. But what he had left out of that explanation were the_ _ **feelings**_ _, the emotional struggles underneath the physical ones._

_It wasn't as though she had never thought about how hard it must have been to be an eleven-year-old boy entrusted with the fate of the world. But she had thought about it in terms of a difficult task one wasn't sure they were up to. She had had no idea what kind of a burden trust itself could be. Sure, she had lived under high expectations her whole life, but not meeting them hadn't had consequences for anyone but herself. Her personal capabilities had never meant the difference between life and death for the entire planet. She had never had the experience of knowing that it was you or no one. Even in the most dire of emergencies there was always backup she could have called, always another SWAT team she could have brought in._

_There was always her father._

_And for most of his life, Gohan had been the same way. No matter how hard things got, no matter how close to death they all were, there had always been his father. Goku (when it really mattered, when things were at their worst) had always been there, sometimes too late to save some, never too late to save everyone. And so when Goku had given up, thrown in the towel and announced that he wasn't strong enough—and not only that, but that Gohan_ _ **was**_ — _the eleven-year-old boy hadn't known what to think._

_It wasn't just that he lacked the viciousness needed to kill someone, or the confidence to truly tap into his powers. The foundation upon which his entire world was built had moved, got up from underneath him and then turned around and put him back down in its place. And what was any little boy supposed to do about that, much less one who had just been informed that it was now his job to save the world?_

_And then. And then, when he had finally opened the floodgates, when he had tapped into his full potential and gained the power to protect his world, to_ _ **be**_ _that new foundation: that was when he learned the most painful lesson of all. In order to gain the power he needed to fulfill his father's expectations, to protect everyone he loved, he had given in to the anger that had been festering inside him his whole life._

_Except the person that anger turned him into had turned out to be someone he was more afraid of than Frieza, more afraid of than Cell. It was a person who enjoyed other people's suffering, a person who didn't know the difference between justice and vengeance. A cold-blooded, bloodthirsty killer._

_Finding out there was a murderer inside him would've been bad enough, Gohan told her. But that murderer had fallen into every trap of conceit and arrogance that the enemies he had faced ever had. It didn't matter that his motives were good, that it was the wicked he wanted to see suffer. His hubris had led to the downfall of, not himself, which would've been just, but his father instead. The father who had had such faith in him had been forced to clean up the mess his son had made, and he had given his life to do it._

_You can see why, Gohan had told her with the most painful smile she had ever seen, his face blurred by the tears in her eyes, I wasn't really keen on people finding out I was the golden fighter._

_Videl would always treasure the memories of the placid summer afternoons she'd spent learning to fly, and she knew she would tell her children that she first began to love Papa when she realized she was willing to cut her hair just to hear him praise her. It was even true. But she was the only one who would ever know that the moment she decided to marry him and damn what anyone else thought about it was in a cramped study room that smelled of burritos and body odor, the moment when Gohan bared his soul to her for the first time._

* * *

_Videl looked down at the scene beneath her feet. She was hovering high in the air over rocky wasteland and scrub grass, the acrid smell of smoke strong in the air. She could see a collection of people like ants on a cliffside, looking down at a man-shaped thing colored green and black beckoning to two figures on the cliffside in particular. One was tall: a man. The other was smaller: a child._

_She knew this scene. She knew it well, from more than one perspective. She knew what was about to happen, what it would cost those involved. There was an air of inevitability so thick she could feel it all the way up where she was, so high that the people on the ground could not see her. What was about to transpire had to happen this way, and no one involved could do anything to change it._

_At least, that was the expectation._

_But Videl Son-Satan did not do things just because other people expected her to._

* * *

_Without hesitation Krillin charged at Cell. A brief flicker of surprise passed over the android's face before leaping to his feet on the bed and taking Krillin's punch in a cross block. Krillin felt the entire force of his blow soak into those unyielding arms and disappear._

_Before he could regroup, Cell had taken him by the arms and flung him out the window. He plowed into the ground, getting tangled in the chains of the swingset. With only a split second warning he saw Cell climbing out the window, and rather than untangle himself Krillin shouted and flared his aura, bursting the chains and scattering the wooden beams across the yard. He planted his feet and gathered a quick Kamehameha in his cupped hands, but Cell was on him before he could fire._

_"Stop fighting me!" Cell demanded, back-handing him. "I just want to talk to you, geez!"_

_Krillin raised himself from where he lay on the ground, blinking in confusion. Something about that hadn't sounded right. He took stock. This wasn't the real Cell. This was Eighteen, or a part of her. He got all the way to his feet._

_"All right," he said, with no small amount of suspicion. "You want to talk? I'll listen." He didn't add that he had better like what he heard._

_Cell stood, hands on his hips in just that way Eighteen did when she was exasperated with him. His purple eyes stared into Krillin's impassively, and then looked away._

_"Krillin?" he said, and Krillin felt a cold thread of foreboding unfurl itself in the pit of his stomach. "Do you think I'm a good mother?"_

_Oh no. Eighteen got like this sometimes. Her impenetrable façade of aloofness and cold competence would occasionally draw back and he would see the fears and insecurities underneath. These were not conversations he enjoyed. Half the time he said the wrong thing and spent the next few days digging himself out of the doghouse. The other half of the time he spent hours, sometimes all the way until sunrise, fighting to keep his beautiful, smart, capable wife from self-destructing under the weight of her own self-doubt. The prospect of having one of_ _**those** _ _conversations with Cell turned his stomach._

_"Y-yes, of course you are." Dammit. Even before Cell whipped cold eyes on him Krillin knew he'd messed up. Of course he thought Eighteen was a good mother. But it was too hard to think of this... being in front of him as his wife. Cell slowly unfolded his arms and glared._

_"That sure doesn't sound like you do," he said dangerously. Krillin sighed, rubbing a frustrated hand over the top of his head. He felt himself getting angry. He didn't know if this was supposed to be Cell or Eighteen or some weird combination of the two. He didn't know what Zema had done to his wife and he just wanted her to wake up. He had_ _ **not**_ _come in here to have stupid conversations with a mortal enemy._

_"I'm sorry, but we don't have time for this," he said impatiently. "We need to get out of here." Even as he said it, he realized he had no idea how to get them both back. He could still feel his body, a thin thread of sensation it was frighteningly easy to lose track of. But even if he could get himself out, he had no idea how to bring Eighteen back with him. His sudden panic destroyed his concentration and he didn't notice Cell talking until he had raised his voice._

" _If you aren't even going to listen to me, then maybe we_ _ **do**_ _need to be punching each other!"_

_Cell stepped forward, each footfall an angry bite into the earth, eyes blazing. It was breath-taking, how horrible the sight was. In almost every way, this was Cell all over again: an unstoppable force coming to kill the woman he hadn't even gotten the chance to love yet, Krillin nothing more than a fly to be brushed away without thinking. He was stronger now, maybe not strong enough to defeat Cell on his own, but quick and clever enough to get away, to be more than an annoying fly. There was more he could do now than he could then. But there was one thing, just one small detail about the figure striding toward him that kept him flat-footed and unable to move._

_That lower lip, being bitten in just that way—that was Eighteen all over, and it meant she was hurting._

_Krillin closed his eyes and let go of what they were telling him. Instantly, all around him, pressing in on every corner of his being, was Eighteen. She had been there all along. He breathed in and she poured down his lungs. He breathed out and she billowed around his face. He opened his fists and she curled in among his fingers. She sat in the pit of his stomach and draped over his head and pressed down on his arms. There was no Cell here. There was only his wife._

_Without needing his eyes' guidance, Krillin reached out and took Eighteen's hand in his own. With his other hand he caressed her cheek, and smiled when he felt the silky brush of her hair on the backs of his fingers. Unerringly, his lips found their way to hers, and they yielded softly as he kissed her. He pulled away, barely enough to be called distance, so close he could tell she was biting her lip again. He opened his eyes, hoping it wasn't still pain she was feeling, and for the first time in what felt like years he laid eyes on his wife._

_She was biting her lip, all right. But with her flushed cheeks and wide eyes, even someone without nearly fifteen years of experience reading her body language could tell what she was feeling. Krillin smiled, a laugh bubbling up, and Eighteen's mouth curved into an answering smile._

" _Don't think being sexy is going to get you off the hook," she said. Krillin grinned._

" _Babe, when has it ever?"_

_She laughed, and he was home._

* * *

Piccolo watched from across the room as Vegeta stirred, his limbs moving in uncoordinated spasms. Even before Trunks opened his eyes, Vegeta was already attempting to sit up, growling deep in his throat as he did. He was confused, soft with sleep, and angry about it. Bulma rushed over and threw her arms around him, hindering his progress even further, but he did nothing to remove her.

Piccolo sat and watched as, a quarter of an hour later, Krillin sat up and stretched, looking down over his shoulder at Eighteen, who drew in a deep breath and coughed. He gently helped her sit up, both of them adding to the joyous cacophony.

Piccolo also watched as Goku sat up, blinking confusedly, scratching his head and running his fingers through his hair, just a few gestures all it took to undo what was probably hours of work by professional stylists. He watched as Bulma and Krillin attempted to explain things to their spouses, as Tien instructed Eighteen on the best way to reach Seventeen, as Goten and Trunks compared notes on their experiences.

He watched, but he did not move from his position at the heads of Videl and Gohan, both still so very far away.

* * *

_Gohan looked down at his daughter, trying not to weep. He should've known it would come to this. Doing something as selfish as trying to change the past to spare himself pain would only push that pain on to someone else. And how like karma that the someone else should be his own daughter._

_Pan looked back and forth between him and the green and black figure standing in the valley. She was dressed in a tiny version of Piccolo's purple gi, and it looked so right on her that it made something in his chest ache. Her gaze was innocent, questioning, trusting. She had no idea what was about to happen._

_Cell did. He wasn't even making his usual taunts. He was just smirking at Gohan knowingly, waiting for Gohan to do it._

_But Gohan couldn't do it. Pan would hate him if he did, wouldn't she? She hadn't been raised in combat the way he had. Fighting was a game she played with daddy. True warfare was a bloody surprise she might never recover from. She was standing on the threshold of innocence, and it was his hand reaching out to push her over._

_He didn't hate Goku for having done this to him. Goku hadn't had a choice. But himself… He could've left well enough alone. He had decided to be dissatisfied, to run away instead of facing his problems. And now, as always, someone else was paying the price for his foolishness._

_Pan could sense his indecision and flopped down on the ground. She started making castles out of the dirt, humming the tune of her favorite of Hercule's motivational workout videos. "Gotta fight! That! Fat!" she sang under her breath._

_Tears pricked Gohan's eyes. His daughter knew nothing of combat. He had lost his father at age four and lived in the wilderness for a year. He had fought monsters and villains, lost comrades and made life or death decisions for most of his childhood, he was_ _ **prepared**_ _for this. And she wasn't. And that was his fault._

_He closed his eyes, though he could still hear Pan singing, still feel Cell smirking at him. He knew he was being foolish. Always Goku had pushed him, trained him, and he was grateful, for that was what had allowed him to survive. Chi-Chi had never understood. She had always tried to pull him in the opposite direction, and he was grateful for that too. He was a more balanced person because of the tug-of-war his parents had played, with him at the center. Chi-Chi and Goku's wills were equally matched, and he had left childhood an equal mix of their dreams for him: strong but smart. Tough but kind._

_Now once more he found himself in a tug-of-war, but the center this time was Pan. And he realized — far, far too late — that the person on the other end of the rope was not Videl._

_It was himself._

_"Daddy? When we going home?"_

_He opened his eyes and found Pan, hands and knees muddy, looking up at him impatiently. Cell chuckled, the sound sending queasy shivers down Gohan's spine._

_"Yes, Gohan, when_ _ **are**_ _we going to end this?"_

_Gohan glared at the android. He would give anything to take this burden away from his daughter. It occurred to him all over again that Goku, looking back over his shoulder, smiling sadly, had not, in his own mind at least, been cleaning up Gohan's mess. He had been cleaning up his own. Gohan clenched his fists and hunched his shoulders against the sudden swell of emotion._

_He was balanced. Too balanced. He could no more save Pan from this than he could force her to it. He was in a state of perfect equilibrium, unwilling to let the world die, unwilling to make his daughter save it. He, and she, and they, would all be stuck here for eternity because_ _**he could not make up his mind** _ _._

_Everything split down the middle._

_Something whistled down through the atmosphere, parting the clouds as it fell and causing a huge crater in the ground when it landed. A blinding golden light shone through the dust swirling away from the impact, and when it finally cleared Gohan felt his breath catch in amazement._

_Crouched in front of Cell, glowing and fierce, confident and powerful, was Videl._

_With a kiai that beat on his eardrums like thunder Videl raised both hands and shot an enormous beam of light that engulfed Cell and half the landscape along with him. It hadn't been a proper Kamehameha, not even close, but he knew that's what it was. It was the only thing it could be, here, in this moment. Cell was putting up a fight, but not much of one, struggling just to keep from being blown away._

_Videl shouted over her shoulder. "Come on, Pan, help mommy beat the bad guy!"_

_Gohan felt Pan's silky hair brush past his fingers as she turned away from him. Squealing with delight, she flew down to join her mother and brought her hands up in another not-Kamehameha, pinning Cell down with an equally large blast, laughing like it was all a great game. Gohan, suddenly off balance, could only watch._

_They looked so right, standing there together, one larger figure next to a smaller one, united in purpose. Together they had Cell on the back foot, struggling simply to stay alive. But they were not winning. Not quite._

_He felt eyes on him, large and blue — beautiful, stimulating, arresting: demanding motion and rendering him incapable of it. Once more someone looked over their shoulder at him while he stood there useless, and for a moment those eyes were the whole universe. Then,_

_"You, too, honey."_

_Something broke._

_Gohan reeled, his careful balance undone. He was falling— but it was all right. He knew where the center was now, and he let go of everything and fell gratefully toward it. When he landed, he cupped his hands in a textbook Kamehameha and together all three of them blasted Cell into oblivion._

* * *

Videl sucked in a huge breath, her lungs expanding greedily as though it were her very first taste of air. Her limbs felt strangely stiff and unresponsive as she attempted to sit up. A familiar four-fingered hand slipped under her back and pushed her upright, lingering until she was sitting up under her own power. Just the act of whipping her head around to check on Gohan made her dizzy. She braced herself on one hand, the other holding her head.

"Easy," Piccolo said, reaching out to steady her again. "You've been out for a while."

"...Gohan?" she whispered, her mouth so dry her throat made an audible click as it unstuck.

"Videl," Gohan whispered, his voice as paper dry as hers. She lifted her head and there he was, lying next to her, still in the blue military uniform Zema had put on him. But it was Gohan staring out of those kind, black eyes, Gohan struggling to reach up to touch her face, and it was Gohan's neck she buried her face in, weeping for joy.


	20. Chapter 20

_"Halt, villain!" Seventeen flourished his long black cape lined with red satin. Iron Dominator turned and laughed evilly, clutching Princess Bunny even tighter._

_"Oh, you want this back, do you?" He shoved her to the side, where she was taken by a minion. Iron Dominator drew his rapier and pointed dramatically at Seventeen, who was dressed as Domino Mask. "Let's see if you can take her from me."_

_Seventeen drew his own rapier and they flew at each other, swords clashing. Seventeen grinned, toying with the man who had dared to harm the princess while she was under his protection. There would be no clemency this time. Domino Mask was a pussy who always let the bad guy get away. Seventeen, with his hair slicked back and eyes hidden by his signature domino mask, would not make that mistake._

_Plus, he looked damn cool with a rapier._

_He and Iron Dominator exchanged blows for several minutes before Seventeen decided it was time to end things._

_"Your reign of terror has come to an end," he said dramatically, and then paused as he tried to remember the next line. As he was thinking he heard a slight cough that might have been someone feminine stifling a laugh. Suspiciously he looked around, but the only woman in sight was Princess Bunny._

_He turned back to Iron Dominator. "A list of your crimes would reach all the way down to hell, but —" His eyes whipped back to Princess Bunny, who was looking awfully flat-chested these days. Her bustiness was another mark against this show, considering how athletic she was supposed to be, but even in his own fantasies he didn't think he'd given her quite that much of a reduction. She looked back at him wide-eyed, although somehow the look was more mocking than innocent and, anyway, come to think of it, weren't her eyes supposed to be brown? Seventeen blinked._

_"Sis?"_

_Princess Bunny — or rather, Android Eighteen — completely broke character and laughed, elbowing the minion that had her by the shoulders in the gut. He wheezed comically and fell to the ground. Eighteen brushed the wedding veil away from her face and looked at her brother in amused exasperation._

_"What the hell are you doing, Seventeen?"_

_Seventeen gripped his rapier even tighter. "The hell am **I** doing? What the hell are **you** doing? This is — this is..." What was this, anyway? Seventeen looked down at himself, the exquisitely tailored tuxedo and cape suddenly seeming silly when mere seconds ago they had been the height of coolness. Eighteen smirked._

_"This is priceless, is what it is." Then she sighed. "But blackmail fodder aside, we really need to get out of here."_

_"What? Get out of... What? Where... The hell?" Seventeen clutched the rapier in one hand as Eighteen stepped closer and took his other hand. He kept his gaze on his sister, who suddenly seemed to be the only real thing in existence._

_"It's a hell of a story," she said, back-handing Iron Dominator without looking. "But I'm not telling it until I get the glitter out of my hair."_

_"There's no glitter," Seventeen objected. Eighteen snorted._

_"There's always glitter."_

_She led her brother away, both of them still arguing._

* * *

Goten heard Trunks' voice down the hall, and he peeked his head out from his room despite not being allowed out of it. Since their return Chi-Chi had alternated between smothering him with hugs and kisses and smacking him around the head and yelling at him, but the one constant had been that Goten was not allowed to leave his room. The one time he had dared ask how long he was grounded for Chi-Chi had nearly had an aneurysm.

But he hadn't seen Trunks since they got back, hadn't been allowed to call or anything, and even though he was pretty sure they were back on familiar ground now, he hadn't gotten the chance to make sure. Trunks glanced up over Chi-Chi's shoulder and winked, then apologized to Chi-Chi for intruding and left. Goten slipped back into his room before Chi-Chi could notice him.

A minute later she knocked on the door and then entered without waiting for a response. She looked apologetic.

"Sweetie, that was Trunks at the door just now. He wanted to see you, but I told him you're grounded, so he gave me this to give to you." She handed him a capsule and then put a hand on his shoulder. "I know you boys are having a hard time right now, so it kills me to have to separate you, but maybe you'll think about this the next time you decide to go traipsing around the universe without telling me."

She gave him a peck on the forehead and then left. Goten waited until he was sure she was back in the kitchen before popping the capsule. A cell phone dropped into his hand, state-of-the-art Capsule Corp., along with a charger. When Goten pressed the power button he could see a text message already waiting for him.

_meditate when you get a second_

Goten was only confused for a moment. He grinned, hid the cell phone in case Chi-Chi barged in, and sat cross legged on his bed. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his mind. Despite being in a self driving vehicle on the way back to Capsule Corp., Trunks was there, ready and waiting. Goten waved, and then with a start realized that Trunks was back to being his smaller self. Trunks saw his surprise and chuckled.

"I guess I'm not really used to being taller yet," he said. With a moue of concentration he grew until his appearance matched what he really looked like. Goten wondered if he could make himself grow, but decided there would be time for that later. "This is such a cool technique, I wonder why the old guys only use it for training."

Goten shrugged, conjuring up a rock for himself to sit down on. "What else do you want to use it for?"

Trunks spread his hands, as though the answer were obvious. "For this. So we can hang out even when we can't, you know, hang out." He hesitated, his easy assurance faltering for a second. "You know, if you... want to."

For a moment Goten was too shocked to say anything. If he wanted to? Why on earth would he not want to? Trunks was looking down and to the side, like there was something interesting on the ground. But there was no ground here. Goten remembered that he had been the one to punch Trunks in the face, that he had been the one to challenge him to a fight back on Ophidia. He sighed and kicked his heel against the imaginary rock.

"Yeah, I'd like that," he said. "If you aren't... too busy. You know, with your new friends and... and work and stuff."

Trunks looked up from the fascinating piece of nothing in confusion. "What new friends?"

Goten looked back in equal confusion. "You know. At your school. All those friends you hang out with there. The ones you didn't want to see me."

He hadn't meant to say it, and it came out far too bitterly. He looked back down at the rock, ashamed of himself, and for a moment there was utter silence. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw Trunks' feet shuffle and heard him sigh.

"Those aren't friends, Goten," he said. "They're the sons and daughters of companies that Capsule Corp. has to make nice with. If they tell their parents that the future heir of Capsule Corp. is some kind of freak, then that has repercussions for our stock price. People's livelihoods depend on that stock price."

Goten looked up. Trunks was pacing now, digging his fingers through his hair. He sounded like he was quoting something, but he also sounded slightly desperate. "Mom and grandpa can get away with being eccentric because they're geniuses, and mom's so charming she can do anything she wants and make people love her for it. But I'm not a genius, and I'm not charming. So if I'm not at least an amazing businessman then I'm going to make Capsule Corp. tank just because I can't live up to the family legacy. When you're a Briefs it's not enough to be good enough. You have to be so much better than everyone else that it's obvious why you're in charge."

Trunks trailed off, but he was still pacing. Goten pulled his knees up to his chest. He felt overwhelmed just listening to it all, and here he'd been pouting because Trunks didn't come over to his house as much as he used to. Guilt sank like a stone in his stomach.

"I'm sorry Trunks. I... didn't really get it."

Trunks stopped pacing, the fingers of his right hand still caught in his hair. He looked at Goten in the corner of his eye, and then glanced away.

"Well, why should you have?" he said airily. "I didn't get it until dad spelled it out for me last year."

Goten blinked. "Your dad did?"

Trunks smiled. "Yeah. Mom doesn't think about this kind of thing, and I'm not sure grandpa's ever seen the inside of a boardroom. But dad knows all about political maneuvering and stuff, and he thought it was high time I started thinking about it too."

There was silence again as Goten digested this. Then he hopped off the rock and dusted off his pants.

"How long until you get home?" he asked, stretching.

"Another couple of hours. Why?" Trunks asked, but he was already smiling. Goten straightened from his stretch and grinned back.

"Then we have plenty of time for a good spar."

* * *

Krillin leaned back in his deck chair, something fruity and alcoholic in his left hand, and heaved a sigh so deep it seemed to be coming from his soul.

"You said it," Eighteen said from her deck chair next to his. She sipped her own fruity, alcoholic drink, and then added, "You know, a surprise party would have been a terrible idea anyway."

Marron and her cousins ran and played around the pool in front of them. Krillin chuckled.

"Maybe. But you didn't see what a great little conspirator Marron was. We're going to need to watch out for that."

Across the pool Seventeen raised his drink in salute from where he and his wife also lounged. Krillin raised his in answer.

"So you've taught our daughter how to hide things from us," Eighteen said. "Fantastic."

"You might be changing your tune on that in a minute," Krillin said, sitting up. "Marron? It's time!"

Marron shouted and sloshed her way out of the pool, running into the pool house and emerging a second later with a small box in her hand. Krillin got up from his lounge chair and accepted the box from her, then knelt in front of Eighteen, who had already sat up and lifted her sunglasses to perch on the top of her head.

"What are you...?"

Krillin cleared his throat and looked into his wife's eyes, which were narrowed in confusion.

"Eighteen, I would gladly spend a thousand lifetimes with you. Will you marry me all over again?"

He held up the box, and opened it to reveal a ring set with a sapphire exactly the color of her eyes. Eighteen stared at it in shock, and Krillin grinned, but the grin began to slip as the shock continued for a little longer than he thought it really warranted.

"Um, Eighteen?" he whispered, but to his surprise his wife turned to their daughter, who was standing next to them with one hand pressed to her cheek, hard.

"Marron," she said in an exasperated voice, and Marron burst out laughing. Krillin looked between his two favorite blondes, and then his jaw dropped when Marron pulled out _another_ box from behind her back and handed it to her mother. Eighteen took it with a sour look. "You little sneak."

Marron squealed with mirth and danced in place. "Daddy came up with the idea first, you know. Go on, mom, open it!"

With a darkly amused glance at Krillin, Eighteen opened her own box, which contained a solid gold band.

"You should look at the inside," she said, looking away. Krillin took the ring. Engraved on the inside was a heart surrounding their initials. It was probably the most sappy thing Eighteen had ever done, and Krillin quickly scrubbed at the tears springing into his eyes.

"Put it on, daddy!" Marron said, bouncing on her toes. "And you put yours on, mom!"

Before Eighteen could move, Krillin took her left hand and slipped the sapphire ring onto her ring finger. Gently he kissed the back of her hand, and looked up to find her beet red.

"Give me that." She took the ring and slipped it onto his finger, and then squeezed his hand, biting her lip again. They gazed into each other's eyes for an endless moment that felt like the best kind of eternity.

"I now pronounce you man and wife!" Marron said with mock solemnity, and they turned and, acting in tandem, gave their daughter a tickle attack she would never forget.

* * *

Goten headed to the kitchen, intent on sneaking a midnight snack. Instead he nearly ran over his dad, who was sitting cross legged in the middle of the living room floor.

"What are you doing, dad?"

Goku opened one eye and regarded his son solemnly.

"I'm trying to figure how to do what Zema did."

It was a warm night, but suddenly Goten felt chilly. He crossed his arms over his stomach. "Why do you want to know that?"

Goku opened both eyes, pausing his meditation for the moment. He looked down at his hands with a slight frown and spoke. "He locked me away so easily. I don't even remember the moment he took over. I was on my way to Bulma's, and then I got there and she was talking to me, and then I left and went to fight someone, and somewhere in there I went from being awake to being asleep without even noticing. That kind of power is overwhelming, but not the exciting kind." Goku's frown deepened. "It makes me angry. And… something else. Like… worms in my stomach. Cold worms. No —" Goku made a face like he had bitten something sour and finally looked up at Goten. "I don't know what I mean. But I'm going to make sure it never happens again."

He closed his eyes and went back to meditating, leaving Goten shivering. The idea that there was anything in the universe Goku was afraid of was terrifying, but Goten still remembered Gohan looking at him with a flat hatred that belonged to someone else and he knew that fear was justified. He had also realized, in a conversation with Trunks, that there was no good reason Zema hadn't snatched the two of them as well. Perhaps he didn't want younger bodies that weren't finished growing, or there might have been some other reason. But until Goten knew what it was, for all he knew he had only been spared through blind luck. This could be him right now, wondering futilely which moment had marked the transition from reality to dream.

Snacks forgotten, he settled down cross legged in front of his dad. Goku cracked open a questioning eye, and Goten took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

"Teach me too."

* * *

They didn't speak for the entire flight out to Mount Paozu. They weren't angry; there was simply nothing to say. Pan dozed most of the way there, so the only sound for nearly four hours was the high whine of the engine and the dull roar of the wind. When they got there Gohan took Pan out of her car seat and carried her to the house. Videl watched him for a moment, noting his erect posture, his slightly lifted chin. Seeing him be brave made something behind her sternum ache.

Chi-Chi had sewn a tiny, child-sized orange gi, and Pan stripped off her clothes right in the doorway and refused to let anyone help her put it on. Everyone smiled and laughed, but Gohan's mirth was forced. Goten (newly released from grounding) ran to get Goku from the forest, and pretty soon he landed hard in the yard, crouching down with his hands open to receive Pan's excited, screaming self.

"Airplane! Airplane!"

Goku laughed. "Panny, you don't need me to do airplane! You can fly on your own!"

Pan jumped up and down in fury, each landing shaking the earth and making two, tiny foot-shaped impressions in the dirt. Gohan stepped forward, ready to discipline his child, but Goku waggled his finger in Pan's face.

"Nuh-uh-uh. I'm supposed to be teaching you martial arts, but I can't do that if you throw a fit. Do you want to learn from me?"

Pan stopped, her eyes wide. Videl held a hand over her mouth, not sure what she was trying to keep in. She didn't think Goku had ever refused Pan anything in her whole life. Glancing at Gohan all she could see was tense shoulders and raised hands, but he wasn't moving. Goku went on.

"You're a strong girl, Panny, strong like me. I'm going to teach you everything my grandpa and Master Roshi taught me. It's going to be hard work, but I know you can do it."

Pan nodded her head emphatically. Videl knew it was mostly his tone she was responding to. But at least she wasn't throwing a tantrum anymore.

"Great! Let's start with a punch. Show me how you make a fist."

Chi-Chi bustled inside, making noises about lunch. Goten wandered off somewhere, already bored. Goku corrected Pan's form, bringing his massive, ham-sized fist next to hers for comparison. Soon they were completely engrossed in each other. Videl and Gohan might as well have been invisible.

Eventually Videl took Gohan gently by the elbow and led him inside. He flashed her an uneasy, self-deprecating smile, and they joined Chi-Chi for lunch, making small talk as though nothing had changed.

That night as they lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take them, Gohan rolled over and buried his face in her hair.

"Why would I dream about sending Pan to fight Cell?"

His voice was so quiet she would not have heard it had the house not been utterly still. She rolled over and wrapped her arms around his head, tucking it under her chin.

"You don't want her to go through what you went through," she said.

"But she won't!" Gohan sighed deeply, the breath tickling her neck. "But she might."

"Yes," Videl said. Gohan made a sound that might have been a whimper and might have been a groan.

"It's stupid," he said in an even tinier voice. "Of course she needs to learn how to fight. She needs to learn control, she needs to learn how to defend herself. I _know_ that. But..."

"I know."

They lay curled together, just breathing.

"Piccolo will want to train her too, now," Gohan said eventually.

"Hey, free babysitting."

He blew a petulant raspberry on her neck and she chuckled. She combed her fingers through his hair, her nails scratching lightly at his scalp. Eventually his breathing slowed, and she wondered if he had gone to sleep.

"I'll keep training too," he said after a while, voice thick with sleep. "So she never has to fight alone."

"And I'll be there with you both," Videl promised, but Gohan was already dreaming.


End file.
